By 5:30 a.m., they were standing on the Capitol’s West Lawn, the grass beneath their feet still wet from the morning dew, their faces lit only by the illuminated Capitol dome overhead and the bluish glow of the giant TV monitors with a screenshot of a smiling Pope Francis.
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Many of them, including a few members of Congress, were overwhelmed by his speech.
“I liked the way the first thing he said was, ‘I’m in the land of the free and the home of the fearless, ‘ ” Santi said. “I have no doubt that the United States – and this Congress – have an important role to play”.
He has been the only pope to address Congress. The pope’s message brought many lawmakers to tears.
“Like many Pennsylvanians, I also am very proud that Pope Francis has chose to visit Philadelphia this weekend for the World Meeting of Families Conference”, Toomey said.
Francis addressed Congress the day after he raised other political issues such as climate change and inequality in a speech at the White House on Wednesday, the first full day of his six-day trip to the United States. “He reminded us that, whatever our policy differences might be, we are all called to put the good of our people above all”, said Rubio.
A paragraph in the prepared text quotes briefly from the Declaration of Independence – the passage on self-evident truths – and then says, “If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it can not be a slave to the economy and finance”.
“God bless America!” he concluded, as he had in the House chamber.
To underscore his message of helping the poor, Francis went straight from the US Capitol in his small black Fiat to have lunch with homeless people, telling them there was no justification for homelessness.
The pope described himself the “the son of immigrants” from Italy who settled in Argentina last century.
On another contentious subject, Francis advocated abolition of the death penalty in the US, an idea that enjoys support from lawmakers of both parties at the federal level.
The United States has grappled for years over what to do with illegal immigrants.
“Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated”, he said. He quoted a Catholic teaching document that calls business “a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving the world”. The mention of climate change drew standing cheers from Democrats while Republicans stood to applaud the reference to abortion.
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The masses cheered when he was introduced to Congress as “the pope of the Holy See”. Prayer unites us; it makes us brothers and sisters. The Catholic Church opposes gay marriage, recently legalized by the Supreme Court.
