U.S. VISIT
Vatican frowns at White House guest list for Pope
A row has erupted after the White House invited transgender rights activists and a gay former bishop to a welcoming ceremony for Pope Francis.
Vatican officials were said to be offended by the guest list and opponents of U.S. President Barack Obama accused him of trying to use the papal visit to put pressure on the Pope over same-sex marriage and abortion.
The Pope will be greeted Wednesday on the White House lawn by Obama and thousands of guests including Mateo Williamson and Vivian Taylor, who are transgender.
Bishop Gene Robinson, who was the first openly gay Episcopal bishop in the U.S., has also been invited. The crowd will include Sister Simone Campbell, a nun who in 2010 wrote a letter to Congress backing Obama’s health reforms despite objections from Catholic groups that they could provide funding for abortion and contraception.
The Vatican was not consulted over the guest list and a senior official voiced his concerns. There was concern that if the Pope were to be photographed with some of the guests it could be interpreted as him endorsing their positions.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest denied that was why certain guests had been invited, saying “there will be 15,000 other people there, too.”
Ben Rhodes, Obama’s communications adviser, said the Pope would “make his own determinations and I’m sure he’ll speak his mind.”
Robinson, who was bishop of New Hampshire from 2003 to 2012, blamed “conservative reactionaries” in the papal circle for what he called the kerfuffle over the guest list. “I find it really hard to believe that Pope Francis would be too concerned about one gay guy and a feisty nun in a crowd of thousands,” Robinson said.
It was the latest controversy ahead of Pope Francis’s six-day visit, his first to the U.S. Last week Paul Gosar, a Catholic Republican congressman, announced he was boycotting the visit amid reports the Pope would devote much of a speech to climate change, rather than what Gosar called “the sanctity of life and Christian persecution” in America.
Before his trip to the U.S., the Pope spent four days in Cuba. On Monday in Holguin, the Pope sought to revive faith on the Caribbean island after decades in which the Church was driven underground by the Communist regime.
He celebrated a Mass where Cuban rhythms mixed with church hymns under a scorching sun.
Holguin’s Plaza of the Revolution was packed with an estimated 150,000 people for the Mass.
Security agents prevented members of the crowd to get close to the Pope. On Sunday, an apparent dissident hung on to the popemobile in Havana and seemed to be appealing to the pontiff before the man was dragged away.
In his homily in Holguin, a city of about 300,000, Francis pressed the subtle themes he has developed during the Cuban visit. He told the crowd of how Jesus picked a lowly and despised tax collector, Matthew, and instructed him without casting judgment to follow him. That experience of mercy changed Matthew forever.
Francis told the Cubans that they, too, should allow themselves “to slowly overcome our preconceptions and our reluctance to think that others, much less ourselves, can change.”
I find it really hard to believe that Pope Francis would be too concerned about one gay guy and a feisty nun in a crowd of thousands.