Bill O’Reilly attends the Hollywood Reporter’s 2016 35 Most Powerful People in Media at Four Seasons Restaurant on April 6, 2016 in New York. (Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)

It’s ironic that Bill O’Reilly — perhaps the most prominent Catholic conservative on American television — was fired the same day he met Pope Francis.

The two occupy different intellectual parts of the Catholic Church, and the television personality has made his disdain for some of the pope’s positions known.

After Francis derided then-candidate Donald Trump’s proposed border wall last year as “not Christian,” O’Reilly took to the airwaves to push back on the pope. At the time, he said, “I would suggest to Pope Francis, that millions of Americans have been harmed economically by our immigration system which desperately needs reform. I think I could persuade the pope that providing protection and enforcing settled law is certainly not un-Christian.”

It’s unlikely that O’Reilly ever got that chance to try to persuade the pope on Wednesday when he briefly shook hands with the pontiff in Rome while on vacation.

Read more