Just When You Think It Can't Get Worse...

 

ROME — In a meeting initiated by the Vatican, Pope Francis on Monday hosted a group of NBA players to hear about their social justice activism at a time of deep polarization in the United States.

The meeting, with five players who have been vocal on such matters as White privilege and police violence, offers a glimpse into what aspects of U.S. society the pontiff feels are most important. The meeting also shows the reach of sports activism in the United States, where athletes, many of them Black, have become some of the highest-profile proponents for social change.

Francis regularly hosts bishops, educators and charitable workers, but it is far less common for him to sit down with athletes. Notably, the pope in September elected not to meet with a far different American group coming through Rome — a delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, after Pompeo infuriated Vatican officials by criticizing the church’s diplomacy with China.

 So who did the Pope meet with? These suffering souls:

Kyle Korver (annual salary $2.6 million), Sterling Brown (annual salary $3.8 million) , Jonathan Isaac (annual salary $5.6 million), Anthony Tolliver (annual salary 2.8 million) and Marco Belinelli (annual salary $6 million)

 

Do you think they talked about income inequality?