Joy Behar worries Pope Francis will be replaced by 'conservative guy'

"The View" co-host Joy Behar reacted to Pope Francis' death on Tuesday and lamented that the late Pontiff could be replaced by some "conservative guy." 

"I wonder because there might be a backlash against how good he was and how much humility he had compared to some of the leaders in this world right now, so there might be a backlash to it, and they’ll get some conservative guy in there who, you know, is anti-gay and everything else," Behar said.

Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, died Monday morning, Vatican camerlengo Cardinal Kevin Farrell announced. The Pope's funeral is set for Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square.

FIVE WAYS POPE FRANCIS IMPACTED THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

"The View" co-hosts Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin discuss Pope Francis' death on Tuesday, April 22, 2024. (Screenshot/ABC/TheView)

Co-host Sunny Hostin also said she hoped Francis would be replaced by someone similar to him and talked about how she had struggled with being a Catholic due to sex scandals and the Church's views on the LGBTQ+ community.

"I’ve struggled with being a Catholic, but this pope changed things for me," she said. "I remember I was having this discussion with you, Joy, about how I feel like there’s a crisis of empathy in this country, that unless it happens to you, you can’t feel the empathy of it happening to somebody else. They’re going to deport that person. It’s not going to affect my family, so I don’t care that it’s affecting others," Hostin said.

Hostin said she watched a "60 Minutes" interview with the Pope and quoted him saying, "We have to get over our hearts to feel again. We cannot remain indifferent in the face of such human dramas. The globalization of indifference is a very ugly disease." Hostin then added to his quote, saying that she thought it was a condition that "this country is suffering from."

Co-host Whoopi Goldberg recalled her 2023 visit with Pope Francis during the show on Tuesday.

"Listen, he brought, and this sounds crazy, but he brought 100 comedians from around the world. One hundred of us into meet with him. And what he said was, ‘I want to laugh more, we all need to laugh more,' and then he looked at the 100 of us, and he said, ‘what you do is very important, because without you, it’s a grayer day,’" Goldberg said. 

"He is exactly what I hoped he would be, which is a pope for all people regardless of religion, which I really appreciated, and I wanted to thank him for all of my gay friends, and for all of my divorced friends, because he basically has said, listen, God loves you no matter what. Come back to the church. I appreciated that," Goldberg said in an October 2023 episode of "The View," during which she discussed meeting Francis.

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The Pope preached frequently on the Catholic virtues of mercy, kindness and humility. He did not shy away from controversy. And American presidents, including Donald Trump and Joe Biden, were not immune from his views. 

Less than a month into President Donald Trump’s presidency, the Pontiff criticized the Republican’s plans for the mass deportations of migrants, stressing that the forceful removal of people simply for their immigration status deprives them of their inherent dignity and "will end badly." 

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Fox News' Caitlin McFall, Emma Colton and Chris Massaro contributed to this report.