Pope Francis’ Speech to Congress Comes at Time of Political Division

New York Times

By Peter Baker and Jim Yardley

September 24, 2015

Pope Francis’ Speech to Congress Comes at Time of Political Division

Taking a podium never before made available to the bishop of Rome, Pope Francis plans to head to Capitol Hill on Thursday morning as a missionary of peace preaching to a Congress that has known little of that in recent years.

His high-profile address to a joint meeting of the House and Senate comes at a time of intense partisan and ideological ferment over divisive policy questions, some of which deeply concern the Roman Catholic Church and its 70 million members in the United States.

But both sides of the aisle will be looking to his words for moral support for their arguments. Democrats were already cheered by his backing of immigration and climate change regulation during his visit to the White House on Wednesday. Republicans were hoping to hear Francis speak to the sanctity of life for the unborn and a traditional definition of marriage.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said in a video previewing it. “There’s a lot of interest in what the pope is saying, his outreach to the poor, the fact that he thinks people ought to be more religious. He’s got other positions that are a bit more controversial, but it’s the pope.”

Francis will be the first pope ever to address Congress, a milestone in the journey of the Catholic Church in the United States. Mr. Boehner, a proud Catholic, has invited three popes over 20 years to come to Capitol Hill, with this being his first success. His Democratic counterpart, Nancy Pelosi of California, is also a Catholic with a strong affinity for the pope.

Francis has admitted his discomfort in speaking English, and his congressional address is expected to be the longest and most challenging English-speaking appearance of his papacy. He spoke some English during a 2014 visit to South Korea.

In his White House speech on Wednesday, Francis struggled with some words and pronunciations but showed much improvement. Vatican officials and friends of the pope say he studied the language regularly this summer.

Congress invited its first foreign dignitary to address it in 1874 with the visit of King Kalakaua of Hawaii, which at the time was not yet an American territory, much less a state. It did not ask another until 1934, and it was not until the 1950s that it became more commonplace. Nearly four dozen have spoken in the last 25 years, including historic figures such as Nelson Mandela, Boris N. Yeltsin and Queen Elizabeth II.

Mr. Boehner’s invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel set off a partisan explosion as Democrats accused the speaker of giving a critic of President Obama a prominent venue to attack him. Mr. Netanyahu used the opportunity to condemn the president’s emerging nuclear accord with Iran.

But a pope is a different situation altogether. While his speech will be parsed carefully by both sides to determine political advantage, it has been a long time since a world figure who commands so much authority as the pope has addressed Congress.

Not that long ago, the prospect of the head of the Catholic Church making such a speech would have been unthinkable. Catholics in politics were a source of suspicion and a subject of slander for generations. Even as John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic elected president, he felt compelled to defend his faith by asserting that he would not take orders from the pope.

Today, the pendulum has swung drastically. The Congress that Francis will address on Thursday includes 138 House members who are Catholic and 26 senators, or nearly 31 percent, compared with 22 percent of the overall adult population. Not only are both House leaders Catholic, so is Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who serves as president of the Senate.

While Francis is the first pope to address Congress, his two predecessors spoke to other national legislatures. Pope John Paul II addressed the parliaments of Poland (1999) and Italy (2002), while Pope Benedict XVI spoke at the German Parliament in 2011. Francis also addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, last year.

The pope is such a draw here that tickets were flying in recent days. For those unable to get inside, Mr. Boehner’s office distributed about 50,000 tickets to representatives and senators to give constituents who want to watch on jumbo screens on the West Lawn of the Capitol.

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