The Guardian
By Ed Pilkington
September 21, 2015
Before
Pope Francis steps on to the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews military
facility on Tuesday afternoon at the start of a five-day tour of the US,
he will already have
raised the hopes and quickened the pulses of American progressives who
see in him a chance to rise from the partisan swamp of Washington to
higher moral ground.
From
the fight against economic inequality and climate change, to the plight
of undocumented immigrants and the movement against mass incarceration
in US prisons, advocacy
groups see the pope’s first US visit as a once-in-a-generation
opportunity to press their case beyond the arid stalemate of national
party politics. While the TV screens will focus on the pontiff’s big set
speeches before Congress and the United Nations, around
the country thousands of progressive discussion groups and viewing
parties will be held in an attempt to seize the moment.
One
of the more dramatic of these events is a 100-mile “pilgrimage” that
100 women, many of them low-paid immigrant workers, is undertaking from
an immigrant detention
center in Pennsylvania to Washington. The women, who have timed the
march to end just as Francis is landing, wrote an open letter to the US
presidential candidates in which they decried the “rising tide of hatred
toward migrants in the United States” and expressed
their hope that the pope would issue a challenge to “elected leaders
around the world to welcome migrants”.
Pro-immigration
groups see the pope’s arrival as a possible balm for the wounds of
America’s Hispanic communities amid the increasingly shrill
anti-immigration rhetoric
coming from Republican presidential candidates. As Maribel Hastings of
America’s Voice put it, writing in Spanish: “Millions of undocumented
people see in the pope a defender and intermediary who can change hearts
… At least many people hope that the pope
will somehow tackle the poisonous and prejudicial atmosphere that now
grips the Republican race for the presidential nomination.”
Immigrant
support groups have been working with the archdiocese of Washington and
the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to prepare for the papal visit.
The Catholic Legal
Immigration Network, Clinic, is hoping that the pontiff will
specifically raise the ongoing detention of hundreds of undocumented
mothers and children from Central America when he meets several
unaccompanied teenage immigrants on Thursday.
“The
pope has very broad appeal outside Catholics,” said Clinic’s advocacy
director, Ashley Feasley. “That means he has the power to deliver a very
strong message when
he speaks out.”
Her
point about the pontiff’s wide appeal is supported by a recent
Washington Post-ABC News poll that shows that while 86% of Catholics
predictably view him favourably,
so do 70% of all Americans and 65% of non-Catholics. Though some
conservative critics have attempted to distance themselves from the
pope’s visit – one Arizona Republican congressman, Paul Gosar, says he
is boycotting the trip – they are out of step with the
majority of US opinion, the poll suggests.
It
found that 59% of all Americans, and 67% of US Catholics, think that it
would be appropriate for Francis to address social, economic and
environmental issues directly
in his Congress speech.
In
the wake of Francis’s June encyclical on climate change in which he
told the world’s rich nations that they need to take action,
environmental groups are confident
he will speak out on the subject either in front of Congress or the UN,
or both. Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Climate
Covenant that combines 14 national organizations including the US
Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that the pontiff
could take the debate to a more elevated moral level at a time when
several leading Republicans continued to air skeptical views on the
science of global warming.
“He
appeals to people’s moral consciousness – he touches people. That’s
very important as we have to stop seeing climate change in terms of
economics where the prime discussion
still is, and start seeing it as a commonsense need to move quickly
away from fossil fuels towards sustainable energy.”
In
a similar way, progressives working to close the increasing inequality
gap between the rich and the poor in the US have no doubt that he will
be expressing views on
poverty that he has already made crystal clear. He has frequently
lamented the “scandal” of so many hungry children amid so much wealth.
Mackenzie
Baris, an organiser with the workers’ rights group Jobs With Justice,
said that though his words may be familiar, they could still have the
power to move people
to action. “His message that the level of inequality is unacceptable
and against God will be inspiring to millions of working people in the
US. As the 100 women walking 100 miles are showing us, his voice has the
power to mobilise people,” Baris said.
The
other area where progressives and the reform-minded are hoping to see
the pot being stirred over the next five days is criminal justice.
Francis has nailed his colours
to the mast simply by scheduling a visit to the Curran-Fromhold
correctional facility in Philadelphia, a woefully overcrowded
institution that displays many of the problems of mass imprisonment.
He
has also been forthright in his condemnation of the death penalty
around the world, and those opposed to capital punishment in the US are
similarly seeing this as an
opportune moment to press their case. Father Lawrence Hummer, a
Catholic pastor in Ohio who works with the state’s death row inmates and
has written for the Guardian about witnessing a botched execution, said
that Pope Francis had preached that “interruption
of life was a violation of what we hold to be true”.
“He
has gone so far as to say that even the idea of life without parole is
to remove any hope from inmates who are given no chance at
reconciliation or atoning for the
wrongs they have done,” Hummer said.
With
so many progressive hopes hanging in the balance, the potential
certainly exists for disappointment. But with his arrival now imminent,
the expectation remains fierce
for what Baris described as his ability “to inspire people to believe
that we can do things to change”.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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