As Amazonian bishops gathered at the Vatican on Oct. 21, 2019, a man entered a nearby church after dawn and stole three Indigenous statues brought to Rome for the occasion. He threw them into the Tiber River in a videotaped protest to denounce what he called the “pagan idolatry” taking place on Pope Francis’ watch.
The incident underscored the lengths to which Pope Francis’ traditionalist critics were willing to go to vent their opposition to history’s first Latin American pope. From individual protests to social media campaigns, conferences and petitions, conservatives made clear they believed themselves to be more Catholic than the pope and forged unusually vocal resistance to his authority.
