:(
And for political side - in Poland, he was seen as way too leftist/liberal for the conservatives in Church, and too pro-Russian for the liberals in it - he had not condemned Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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And for political side - in Poland, he was seen as way too leftist/liberal for the conservatives in Church, and too pro-Russian for the liberals in it - he had not condemned Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Francis was not sexually liberal. He was marxist. He believed in liberation theology.
As someone who knew personally the man from a spiritual exercises' house in Spain(obviously when he was not yet Pope), I never liked the guy.
He was the friend of dictators. Loved so much Raul Castro, and Maduro, never criticised them, but criticised the affluence of western democracies. His business was the poor and he loved poor makers.
His support for Putin and not denouncing the takeover of absolute power was jarring for someone in his position.
You can be a leftist religious leader, but you have to report abuses when you see them, specially if the abuses are made by your friends. Of course you will lose them if you do.
Francis was too weak in character to oppose them. But as a Pope, that is your job.
It isn't a purely US vs Europe thing though – you will find some Americans who call themselves "classical liberals", by which they mean "liberal" in largely the same sense as many Europeans do. It is just that "classical liberal" is somewhat of an obscure term in the US–you are only likely to know it if you are interested in or have studied economics, politics, etc–but among those Americans who know it there are definitely some who identify with it.
"Progressive" avoids this to some extent, in being a term which is closer to meaning the same thing in the US and Europe – although in a US context, "progressive" often means something in the same direction as "liberal" but going further.
Some people like to talk about two dimensions, social vs economic – so a person can be socially conservative but economically progressive (not an uncommon position among some conservative Catholics, for example) – although that still has the limitation that "socially progressive/conservative" is a selection of issues with an assumption that people's positions across them are correlated, but there are people who break the assumption, e.g. self-described "consistent pro-lifers" who oppose both legal abortion and the death penalty (unlike many "pro-lifers" in the US who oppose legal abortion yet are pro-death penalty), or certain radical feminists who support LGB rights but oppose transgender rights ("gender critical" as they prefer to call themselves, with "TERF" being the pejorative label applied to them by their opponents)
Some of these linkages are country specific – e.g. in the US, most social conservatives support the death penalty and oppose gun control, in some other Western countries you may find most social conservatives opposing the death penalty and supporting gun control, even while they agree with US social conservatives on other issues.