Bernie Sanders did not let a moment pass after Pope Francis arrived in the United States before he took to the Senate floor and praised the pope for his defense of working men and women.

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders expressed that the pope should be praised for “speaking out with courage and brilliance about some of the most important issues facing our world.”

Sanders quoted many of Pope Francis’s ideas, such as: “We have created new idols. The worship of the Golden Calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.”

“I think the pope is right in saying that that is not something that we should be doing,” Sanders said.

Sanders continued, “Today, everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized, without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.”

“If you are poor, if you are unemployed, if you are hungry, government turns its back on you. But if you are rich and if you are powerful and if you can make campaign contributions of hundreds of millions of dollars, we love you, we welcome you, we need you more and more.”

Watch David Pakman discuss the similarities between Bernie and Pope Francis

Watch our discussion on Bernie’s fight against income inequality:

For more on this, read the article from the Washington Post titled: “How Bernie Sanders greeted Pope Francis.”