Vatican City (CNN) - Days before the critical New York primary, one Democratic presidential candidate is somewhere he can't rack up any last-minute primary votes.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is at the Vatican to address a conference on social, economic and environmental issues.
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Sanders began his 15-minute speech to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences with a showing of solidarity and admiration for Pope Francis, emphasizing their agreement on economic justice.
"There are few places in modern thought that rival the depth and insight of the Church's moral teachings on the market economy," Sanders said, a topic which he himself has been speaking about during the presidential race for months.
His speech Friday largely echoed his regular remarks on the campaign trail in the United States: that the concentration of wealth is in too few hands and the middle class is disappearing.
"We can say that with unregulated globalization, a world market economy built on speculative finance burst through the legal, political and moral constraints that had once served to protect the common good," he said.
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The Sanders campaign rejects the notion that there is any political motivation behind the trip, instead saying the conference is an opportunity for the senator to spread his message of economic inequality.
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Sanders, though, didn't refrain from trumpeting the news on the campaign trail.
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"It goes without saying that I have my strong disagreements with certain aspects what the church stands for but (Pope Francis) has been out there talking about the need for a moral economy," Sanders said to a crowd of a little more than a thousand, who cheered when Sanders announced his trip.
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When asked if it was a smart move to take 36 hours to travel out of the country ahead of one of the most important primary elections in the campaign cycle, Weaver took aim at Sanders' opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"Hillary Clinton has been out of the state on a number of occasions for high-dollar fundraisers," he said. "We think this is a more important reason to leave the campaign trail for the day."
Bill Press, a Sanders support and CNN political commentator, put it more colorfully: "He may be leaving the state to see the Pope Francis. She is leaving the state to see the Pope George Clooney in California ... So both of them are leaving the state.
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Sanders has heavily praised Pope Francis in the past, telling CNN in September he considered him "one of the great moral and religious leaders of our time and in modern history."
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Lorenza Giammelli, 74, an Italian-American from Syracuse, is a practicing Catholic and a Bernie supporter. In her eyes, the trip is "wonderful."
"I think it's a very smart move," she said. "I think it's good for the Pope, it's good for (Bernie), too.
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More:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/15/politics/bernie-sanders-pope-francis-vatican-visit/
