Should the Pope desist from making pronouncements about things of which he clearly knows nothing and understands less?

Yes he should, especially politics. He has no business trying to sway the vote with his flock of sheep.

Oh absolutely, Ray. But the vile church can no longer deflect nor forcibly suppress its enormous irrelevency problem, so it is left to the "Holy Father" (a double misnomer, if ever there was one) to drag the musty church into some semblance of modernity, under specious pretense of Papal authority. Problems lie in that his robed underlings are loathe to go along, and the pope is steering way out of his lane. Yet the most obvious issue is that more people can see through the thin charade, nothing tangible is really changing despite these "apostolic exhortations". 

There's a modern parable about the Pope's visit to South Africa during the apartheid years. One day he told his driver to stop the Popemobile while he watched two white men leap into the water and drag a black man from the water while a crocodile clutched at his leg. They then beat the crocodile to death with baseball bats.

He approached the men and blessed them, saying, "There will always be hope for Africa while men like you are here."

When he left one said to the other. "Who was that?"

"That was the Pope. He knows about religion and stuff."

"Maybe he should stick to that. He doesn't know much about crocodile fishing."

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Yeah, Ray. I think the Pope ought to butt out.

I don't think he knows anything about anything.

Shouldn't everyone?

A lack of knowledge and or qualifications seldom stops any of us humans from "pontificating."