The Pope still uses homophobic slurs too. He's the most progressive Pope we've had for a very long time too and he's still talking like uncle Leroy after too many glasses of wine at Thanksgiving.
Someone who vibes with the basic teachings of Jesus (feed the hungry, clothe the poor, turn the other cheek, etc.) and heavy ritual stuff (cathedrals, stained glass, cannibalism by proxy, etc.) but does not vibe with repressive conservative politics.
They were probably raised Catholic, saw some ick with the Institution, but vibed with Jesus too hard to just write the Faith off. Tbf every progressive probably vibes with Jesus if they read what the guy supposedly said.
That'd be the ick. Still a cool dude though, lot on the ball. I'd say progressive Catholics are mostly the ones who assume that if you don't fw the Vatican you don't fw the Christ and don't think about it too much. There's a lotta good people caught up in that mentality.
Can you prove that Christianity isn't the result of some middle eastern Jew learning about Buddhism on the Silk Road and trying to translate it into middle eastern Jew?
Then it was co-opted by people who used it as cover for systematic sexual abuse and murder of entire groups of people and is currently being used to attempt to convert entire countries into dystopian theocracies?
2000 years will do that. It's a sad fact that any prestigious positions of power, especially those implicitly ordained by God™, attract narcissistic sociopaths.