My wife is ex-irish catholic. Her family is so devout that we were not sure all of them would make it to our protestant church. Some of these people come very close to worshiping the pope. I’ve seen quite a bit of it in my life and no small amount of it here.
With that background, that is why, as soon as I read the headline, I did two things. First, I checked to see if it was satire and when I saw it was not, I said to myself, “man, oh man, he just lost a LOT of supporters. He is no idiot. The stakes must be very high.”