Pope Francis, in presenting a pantheon of American heroes for Congress, included one of the nation’s most influential Catholic writers, Thomas Merton (1915-1968), a convert to Catholicism and Trappist monk.
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A group of Bay State Catholic activists are making their way to Philadelphia today in a show of support for the pope’s call for prison and immigration reform.
Such captions made me wonder if I was reading the same speech.
Similarly, his comments on climate change – in which he explicitly mentioned its “human roots” – received a muted response from conservatives, as did his call to abolish the death penalty.
In a clear expression of opposition to abortion, the pope also said that human lives should be protected and defended “at every stage of its development”. “Why are these brothers and sisters of ours homeless?”
Fresh off his meeting with President Barack Obama, Pope Francis delivers a speech on Thursday to a U.S. Congress led by Republicans who have opposed Obama on issues of importance to the pontiff including climate change and immigration.
That’s what’s real dialogue is about: the search for truth.
Thousands of visitors stand for hours to see Pope Francis.
Samuel Gregg is Research Director at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, based in Washington.
In one of the few references to global affairs during his speech, the Pope appeared to be following his predecessors, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, in a critique of United States military involvement in the Middle East. After decrying the rise of religious fanaticism, the Pontiff said: “We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within”.
It is a message as old as Christianity: That we must open our minds to those who are different, and we must open our hearts to those who make us uncomfortable.
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Francis’s most forceful plea, perhaps, was that lawmakers and Americans remember that “most of us once were foreigners”, and that those who cross our borders need our compassion. I’m sure he’s going to look at it as “hey I have a winning game plan, it’s working,”‘ community activist Jim Salinas said. And repeating the invocation again at the conclusion of his remarks to a joint session of Congress Thursday, it was a short prayer for a great nation that needs to fix its badly damaged political discourse.
