The Pope Would Like You to Know He's Not a Marxist

This won't do anything to quell Rush Limbaugh's outsize ego: Pope Francis, the most powerful Catholic on the planet, has responded to charges he is a Marxist.

This won't do anything to quell Rush Limbaugh's outsize ego: Pope Francis, the most powerful Catholic on the planet, has responded to charges he is a Marxist.

Pope Francis granted a long interview with Italian daily La Stampa on Sunday, where he felt obliged to respond to critics who said his economic views tilted far left.

Marxist ideology is wrong. But in my life I have known many Marxists who are good people, so I don't feel offended.

The charge originated from conservatives who did not take kindly to the active Pope's bold statements that slammed trickle-down economics, referred to global poverty as a "scandal" and calling for youth to throw off the "economic and social structures that enslave us."

Limbaugh was not alone in criticizing the Pope, having been joined in the chorus by the wise Andrew Napolitano and the sage Sarah Palin, but he has been one of the loudest proponents of the Francis-as-Marxist theory. In fact, after the Pope was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year, El Rushbo felt he deserved a little bit of credit.

"Now, I'm not a narcissist and I don't think everything's about me," said Limbaugh, narcissistically and thinking about himself, "but I can't tell you the number of people who've sent me notes: 'Do you realize you made this happen? If you had not said a word about this, they would have picked somebody else like Snowden or take your pick.' Who knows, ladies and gentlemen."

For what it's worth, The Atlantic recently ran through Francis's economic thoughts and found the better comparison to be to Karl Polanyi.