POPE WOWS WASHINGTON
Francis greeted with mix of reverence and rock star-worthy screams as he speaks out on immigration, calls for action on climate change
WASHINGTON— Camped out on a Washington sidewalk three hours before Pope Francis was to roll into view, social worker Claudia Coles, 29, thought about what she would be doing when she spotted the Holy Father.
“Saying my prayer, connecting with him spiritually,” she said.
“And a lot of screaming,” she added with a laugh.
On the first full day of his first visit to the United States, the pontiff who doubles as a pop icon was welcomed by a cynical city Wednesday with a rare blend of reverential silence and ecstatic squeals befitting a teen heartthrob.
He greeted the world’s political capital by getting political.
Francis used his first speech on U.S. soil to wade into the raging immigration debate, heartening Hispanics, and to call for urgent action on climate change, boosting U.S. President Barack Obama’s efforts to curb carbon emissions.
At various other points of an eventful day, he pleased conservatives, dismayed advocates for victims of church sexual abuse and dismissed the claims of native American activists unhappy with his choice of saints.
In between, he kissed babies, flashing the gentle charm that has endeared him to the devout and non-Catholics alike.
Thousands of people lined the streets around the White House to watch Francis pass by in his open-sided Popemobile.
“We only saw him for 30 seconds, maybe, but it was so worth it. It was almost an out-of-body experience.”
ELIZABETH NAMUGENYI
ACCOUNTANT
They began arriving at 4 a.m. for a fleeting glimpse of a one-man parade that would not start for more than seven hours. Phone cameras raised high, the multilingual crowd surged toward the barricades when a smiling Francis stopped the slow-moving Jeep Wrangler to embrace young children he picked out of the throngs.
“We only saw him for 30 seconds, maybe, but it was so worth it. It was almost an out-of-body experience. I can’t explain it,” said Elizabeth Namugenyi, 40, a Maryland accountant from Uganda who brought her three kids.
Before the parade, Francis rode in his modest Fiat sedan to the White House, where he was greeted by Obama and more than 10,000 ticketed guests on the back lawn. Speaking in halting English, he called climate change “a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation,” and he praised immigrants.
“As the son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in this coun- try, which was largely built by such families,” he said.
Later, he looked pointedly at Obama when he described religious liberty, a chief concern of social conservatives, as “one of America’s most precious possessions.”
Francis went from the parade to a cathedral where even the assembled bishops could not resist whipping out their smartphones. In his address there, he referred only indirectly to the church’s sexual abuse scandal, praising the bishops for their “courage” in facing the pain it has caused them.
His vagueness, and his focus on the feelings of the clergy rather than the victims he mentioned only once, drew immediate criticism.
“I have to wonder where is the forthrightness we have come to expect of Pope Francis,” wrote Dennis Coday, editor of the National Catholic Register. “This oblique reference will do nothing to assuage the fears of victims’ advocates who believe Francis is more public relations manager than crisis manager when it comes to sexual abuse.”
Francis urged the bishops to adopt a humble style much like his own, advising them to avoid “harsh and divisive language” and be “pastors close to people, pastors who are neighbours and servants.”
Francis ended his public day with a canonization mass for Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Spanish missionary who introduced Catholicism to much of present-day California.
Some Native Americans have protested the selection, alleging Serra was responsible for the persecution, enslavement and death of thousands of their ancestors. Francis differed.
“Junipero sought to defend the dignity of the native community, to protect it from those who had mistreated and abused it,” he said.
Francis will deliver a speech to the U.S. Congress this morning, eat lunch with homeless Washingtonians, then travel to New York City for a series of events on Friday. He will spend Saturday and Sunday in Philadelphia.