On a sunny, September day in 2015, Pope Francis became the first pope to ever address a joint session of Congress. It was his only visit to the United States and one that changed the people who met him forever.
John Boehner, a devoted Catholic who was the Speaker of the House at the time, resigned from Congress the next day. He told Punchbowl News years later that he knew immediately that his career in Congress would never get better than the experience of welcoming Pope Francis to the U.S. Capitol.
“The day the pope was there, that was the happiest in the 25 years I was in the Capitol,” Boehner said. “Democrats, Republicans, House, Senate, staff — everybody was thrilled.”
Boehner and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had invited the pope as a way for Congress to come together. For the first time in history, both House leaders and the vice president, then Joe Biden, were Catholic. Having the pope speak to American political leaders was another historic first.
The buzz before the pope arrived on Capitol Hill was intense, with the most obvious question coming from The Washington Post: “Can Congress behave itself when the pope visits?”
It was a fair concern. Several years earlier, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., had yelled, “You lie!” at President Barack Obama in the House chamber. Would another member of Congress do the same to the pope?
Fearing the worst, a bipartisan group of House members asked Boehner and Pelosi to send instructions to members to ensure nobody made “a spectacle of the visit.” When the day arrived, nobody did.
Instead, the same Congress that had become used to standing, sitting, booing or boycotting State of the Union addresses welcomed Pope Francis with respect and decorum. They rose to their feet as he entered. Boehner wiped tears from his eyes throughout the speech. When the pope called the United States “the land of the free and the home of the brave” in his first sentence, he got another standing ovation.
But the speech that followed wasn’t easy for every member to hear — and it wasn’t meant to be. Over and over, Pope Francis challenged members to apply their own morality across issues and across party lines, particularly when it came to helping the poor and oppressed. Whether a specific position was Democratic or Republican was beside the point, he said.
“You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good,” he said. “For this is the chief aim of all politics.”
He went on to tick through the most polarizing topics of the day.
Credit: NYT
Credit: NYT
As the leader of the Catholic Church, he said that life was sacred and should be preserved at every stage of development. In the case of capital punishment, he said it should be abolished.
“A just and necessary punishment must never exclude the dimension of hope and the goal of rehabilitation,” he said.
On climate change, he called for Congress to act boldly to avoid “the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity.”
“I am convinced that we can make a difference, and I have no doubt that the United States — and this Congress — have an important role to play,” he said.
He pointed to the example of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in talking about the importance of social justice and of President Abraham Lincoln in citing the importance of freedom.
But he saved his strongest words for the topic of immigration, which was already a subject of intense debate and controversy in Congress.
A country of immigrants should welcome new immigrants as they’d want to be welcomed themselves, he said. “We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation.”
Before ending his remarks, he told members to confront extremism and reject polarization in all forms.
“To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place,” he warned.
You don’t need a degree in theology to know that Congress has not lived up to the challenges that the pope put in front of them that day. In many ways, the country has only gotten further away from the ideals that he articulated.
But that didn’t keep members of both parties from continuing to seek out Pope Francis’ blessing and guidance over the years. And it didn’t keep the pope from welcoming them to the Vatican, even on the day before he died.
Nancy Pelosi visited with the pope four times, even though she clashed often with Catholic leaders in her own archdiocese in San Francisco over her position on abortion. And Vice President JD Vance met the pope at the Vatican the day before he died, despite the fact that conservative American Catholics were intensely critical of the pope before his death. The pope greeted the vice president with a smile, and Vance seemed to treat him with reverence in return.
It’s hard to say why American politicians were so drawn to Pope Francis, even when he offered messages they didn’t always want to hear. It may have been a recognition that they were all trying to serve the same people or that they all felt called by the same God.
Will Congress ever live up to the ideals the pope put in front of them that day in September? Maybe not. Will any of us? Let us pray.
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