Amid adoring crowds, the pope addresses climate change and touches on immigration as president reflects: ‘You shake our conscience from slumber’
Rory Carroll in Washington
The pontiff’s journey through the centres of US power and history began on Wednesday with an elaborate arrival ceremony and balmy sunshine at the White House’s south lawn. “What a beautiful day the Lord has made,” President Barack Obama beamed.
Fifteen thousand spectators, including the first lady and the vice-president, packed the lawn for the official start of the pope’s six-day tour of Washington, New York and Philadelphia.
Francis pulled up in his now-famous Fiat, a Lilliputian marvel in the world’s limousine and SUV capital, and listened as the commander in chief of the world’s mightiest military made common cause with him, the head of a 110-acre city state guarded with pikes.
“In your humility, your embrace of simplicity, in the gentleness of your words and the generosity of your spirit, we see a living example of Jesus’ teachings, a leader whose moral authority comes not just through words but also through deeds,” said Obama.
Francis is not only the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, including 70 million Americans: he is popular, a global sensation whom conservatives and liberals alike wish to co-opt – a minor miracle in a polarised country where Republican and Democratic presidential contenders clash bitterly over immigration, economic inequality, the environment, foreign policy, abortion and same-sex marriage.
The Latin American pontiff, visiting the US for the first time in his 78 years, put himself simultaneously above, and on both sides, of the divide, a feat closer to magic realism than triangulation.
“As the son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in this country, which was largely built by such families,” he began, in what was perhaps a veiled swipe at the xenophobic lurch of US politics.
Donald Trump at least would have appreciated that the Argentinian spoke English, his weakest language, carefully enunciating each word.
He explicitly endorsed Obama’s regulatory programme to fight climate change. “I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution. Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation,” he said. “When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history.”
Lest climate-change deniers miss the urgency, Francis added: “To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King: we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honour it.”
A grateful Obama sounded like the 2008 candidate of hope and change. “Holy Father, you remind us that we have a sacred obligation to protect our planet – God’s magnificent gift to us.” He also hailed the pope’s call to help the poor and dispossessed. “You shake our conscience from slumber,” he said.
Social conservatives – not least US Catholic bishops who resent the pope’s relatively soft tone on abortion and divorce – noted his reference to his visit to Philadelphia for the Eighth World Meeting of Families “to celebrate and support the institutions of marriage and the family at this, a critical moment in the history of our civilisation”. Translation: in the age of same-sex marriage.
After a private meeting with Obama in the Oval office, Francis swapped the Fiat for a popemobile – a converted Jeep Wrangler – and kissed babies and saluted cheering, ecstatic crowds lining the route to the Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle, the patron saint of civil servants.
There, speaking in Italian, he addressed about 300 US bishops who are grappling with division, declining congregations and vocations and a sex-abuse scandal. “It is not my intention to offer a plan or to devise a strategy. I have not come to judge you or to lecture you,” he said, though he did urge unity and dialogue. “The world is already so torn and divided, brokenness is now everywhere. Consequently, the church … cannot allow herself to be rent, broken or fought over.”
He alluded to the victims of sex-abuse “crimes”, with little elaboration, and referred to the “innocent victim of abortion” along with children who die from bombings or drown in search of a better life.
Outside crowds waited patiently for the 266th pontiff to emerge, bells pealing across the sunlit city. The only snafu, it seemed, were long delays on the metro, prompting wags to request an exorcism of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
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