Hardball   |  March 14, 2013

Matthews: Pope Francis is conservative on some issues, progressive on others

Chris Matthews talks about what Pope Francis can bring to the modern Catholic church.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> this. a sixth of our country is a spanish background. one in six and growing. imagine the enhanced dignity they must feel after what happened last night in rome. the election of pope francis is so new it's going to take a while to get our head around it. all the people here in our country from central america , the caribbean, they must be thrilled. the cardinal from buenos aires came as a surprise, didn't it? he wasn't a front-runner. my sense is that he will be very offbeat from what we're used to in politics in this country. usually you hear someone say i'm a liberal on social issues but conservative. pope francis is progressive on matters like poverty and economic justice . he's like some old-style democrats who are pro life but solid on health care for the poor, protection of minimum wage. you know, like former bob casey . and more conservative when it comes to matters of sex. maybe it's the best we