“Robes”. Dead giveaway that the speaker knows nothing about the Catholic Church and is probably hostile.
With a president hard at work driving a wedge between American Catholics and their bishops, it shouldn’t be that hard to see why that president would like to know what the pope’s talking about.
I don’t pretend to know a lot about the RCC, I’m just saying that the usual ‘national security’ argument is utterly void in this case.
Addendum: My previous comment means that this is a Protestant who is on your side here.
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