President Obama and His Holiness Pope Francis at Arrival Ceremony (Video/Transcript)

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Good morning.

AUDIENCE:  Good morning!  (Applause.)

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  What a beautiful day the Lord has made.  Holy Father, on behalf of Michelle and myself, welcome to the White House.  (Applause.)  I should explain that our backyard is not typically this crowded -- (laughter) -- but the size and spirit of today’s gathering is just a small reflection of the deep devotion of some 70 million American Catholics.  (Applause.)  It reflects, as well, the way that your message of love and hope has inspired so many people across our nation and around the world.  So on behalf of the American people, it is my great honor and privilege to welcome you to the United States of America.  (Applause.)  

Today, we mark many firsts.  Your Holiness, you have been celebrated as the first Pope from the Americas.  (Applause.) This is your first visit to the United States.  (Applause.)  And you are also the first pontiff to share an encyclical through a Twitter account.  (Laughter.)  

Holy Father, your visit not only allows us, in some small way, to reciprocate the extraordinary hospitality that you extended to me at the Vatican last year.  It also reveals how much all Americans, from every background and every faith, value the role that the Catholic Church plays in strengthening America.  (Applause.)  From my time working in impoverished neighborhoods with the Catholic Church in Chicago, to my travels as President, I’ve seen firsthand how, every single day, Catholic communities, priests, nuns, laity are feeding the hungry, healing the sick, sheltering the homeless, educating our children, and fortifying the faith that sustains so many.

And what is true in America is true around the world.  From the busy streets of Buenos Aires to the remote villages in Kenya, Catholic organizations serve the poor, minister to prisoners, build schools, build homes, operate orphanages and hospitals.  And just as the Church has stood with those struggling to break the chains of poverty, the Church so often has given voice and hope to those seeking to break the chains of violence and oppression.

And yet, I believe the excitement around your visit, Holy Father, must be attributed not only to your role as Pope, but to your unique qualities as a person.  (Applause.)  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.  (Applause.)  

You call on all of us, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, to put the “least of these” at the center of our concerns.  You remind us that in the eyes of God our measure as individuals, and our measure as a society, is not determined by wealth or power or station or celebrity, but by how well we hew to Scripture’s call to lift up the poor and the marginalized -- (applause) -- to stand up for justice and against inequality, and to ensure that every human being is able to live in dignity –- because we are all made in the image of God.  (Applause.)

You remind us that “the Lord’s most powerful message” is mercy.  And that means welcoming the stranger with empathy and a truly open heart –- (applause) -- from the refugee who flees war-torn lands to the immigrant who leaves home in search of a better life.  (Applause.)  It means showing compassion and love for the marginalized and the outcast, to those who have suffered, and those who have caused suffering and seek redemption.  You remind us of the costs of war, particularly on the powerless and defenseless, and urge us toward the imperative of peace.  (Applause.)

Holy Father, we are grateful for your invaluable support of our new beginning with the Cuban people -- (applause) -- which holds out the promise of better relations between our countries, greater cooperation across our hemisphere, and a better life for the Cuban people.  We thank you for your passionate voice against the deadly conflicts that ravage the lives of so many men, women and children, and your call for nations to resist the sirens of war and resolve disputes through diplomacy.

You remind us that people are only truly free when they can practice their faith freely.  (Applause.)
 Here in the United States, we cherish religious liberty.  It was the basis for so much of what brought us together.  And here in the United States, we cherish our religious liberty, but around the world, at this very moment, children of God, including Christians, are targeted and even killed because of their faith.  Believers are prevented from gathering at their places of worship.  The faithful are imprisoned, and churches are destroyed.  So we stand with you in defense of religious freedom and interfaith dialogue, knowing that people everywhere must be able to live out their faith free from fear and free from intimidation.  (Applause.)

And, Holy Father, you remind us that we have a sacred obligation to protect our planet, God’s magnificent gift to us.  (Applause.)  We support your call to all world leaders to support the communities most vulnerable to changing climate, and to come together to preserve our precious world for future generations.  (Applause.)

Your Holiness, in your words and deeds, you set a profound moral example.  And in these gentle but firm reminders of our obligations to God and to one another, you are shaking us out of complacency.  All of us may, at times, experience discomfort when we contemplate the distance between how we lead our daily lives and what we know to be true, what we know to be right.  But I believe such discomfort is a blessing, for it points to something better.  You shake our conscience from slumber; you call on us to rejoice in Good News, and give us confidence that we can come together in humility and service, and pursue a world that is more loving, more just, and more free.  Here at home and around the world, may our generation heed your call to “never remain on the sidelines of this march of living hope.”

For that great gift of hope, Holy Father, we thank you, and welcome you, with joy and gratitude, to the United States of America.  (Applause.)

HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS:  Good morning.

AUDIENCE:  Good morning!

HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS:  Mr. President, I am deeply grateful for your welcome in the name of the all Americans.  As a son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in this country, which was largely built by such families.  (Applause.)

I look forward to these days of encounter and dialogue in which I hope to listen to and share many of the hopes and dreams of the American people.  During my visit, I will have the honor of addressing Congress, where I hope, as a brother of this country, to offer words of encouragement to those called to guide the nation’s political future in fidelity to its founding principles.  I will also travel to Philadelphia for the eighth World Meeting of Families to celebrate and support the institutions of marriage and the family at this critical moment in the history of our civilization.  (Applause.)

Mr. President, together with their fellow citizens, American Catholics are committed to building a society which is truly tolerant and inclusive, to safeguarding the rights of individuals and communities, and to rejecting every form of unjust discrimination.  (Applause.)  With countless other people of good will, they are likewise concerned that efforts to build a just and wisely ordered society respect their deepest concerns and the right to religious liberty.  (Applause.)  That freedom reminds one of America’s most precious possessions.  And, as my brothers, the United States Bishops, have reminded us, all are called to be vigilant, precisely as good citizens, to preserve and defend that freedom from everything that would threaten or compromise it.  (Applause.)

Mr. President, I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution.  (Applause.)  Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to our future generation.  (Applause.)  When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history.  We still have time to make the change needed to bring about a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change.  (Applause.)

Such change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition not only of the kind of world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them.  Our common home has been part of this group of the excluded, which cries out to heaven and which today powerfully strikes our homes, our cities, our societies.  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 honor it.  (Applause.)

We know by faith that the Creator does not abandon us; He never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity has the ability to work together in building our common home.  As Christians inspired by this certainty, we wish to commit ourselves to the conscious and responsible care of our common home.

Mr. President, the efforts which were recently made to mend broken relationships and to open new doors to cooperation within our human family represent positive steps along the path of reconciliation, justice and freedom.

I would like all men and women of good will in this great nation to support the efforts of the international community to protect the vulnerable in our world and to stimulate integral and inclusive models of development -- (applause) -- so that our brothers and sisters everywhere may know the blessings of peace and prosperity which God wills for all his children.


Mr. President, once again I thank you for your welcome, and I look forward to these days in your country.
God bless America.  (Applause.) 

The Pope’s Memo on Climate Change Is a Mind-Blower

Source: The Wire 
 
Pope Francis already has a reputation for barnstorming. His positions on poverty, on gay priests, and liberation theology would have been shocking enough on their own, but in contrast to the more conservative positions of previous popes, they were downright lefty.

Sure, Francis has his more traditional moments. Abortion and assisted suicide are still no-go for the leader of the world’s Catholics. But Francis has been explicit about links between capitalism, materialism, and threats to the world’s poor. There’s a reason he named himself after St. Francis of Assisi—famously poor, famously eco-conscious—after all.

Now the Pope is taking on science. Specifically, in a new encyclical—that’s a letter laying out official Catholic doctrine—Francis describes Earth’s problem with an increasingly messed-up climate, why that’s the purview of religion, and who will suffer the most if people don’t do anything about it. The encyclical, “On Care for Our Common Home,” makes explicit the connection between climate change and oppression of the poorest and most vulnerable. It’s well-argued, clear, at times quite moving…and 42,000 words long. So here’s the good-parts version.

The thesis statement

It is no longer enough to speak only of the integrity of ecosystems. We have to dare to speak of the integrity of human life, of the need to promote and unify all the great values. Once we lose our humility, and become enthralled with the possibility of limitless mastery over everything, we inevitably end up harming society and the environment.

Nature isn’t a possession.

If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.

Rather than a problem to be solved, the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise.

The climate is messed up and people have to fix it.

The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. At the global level, it is a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life. A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.

The consequences of climate change are a social justice issue.

Even as the quality of available water is constantly diminishing, in some places there is a growing tendency, despite its scarcity, to privatize this resource, turning it into a commodity subject to the laws of the market. Yet access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights. Our world has a grave social debt towards the poor who lack access to drinking water, because they are denied the right to a life consistent with their inalienable dignity.

Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost for ever. The great majority become extinct for reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.

Scientists are right, and this is about more than science.

We must be grateful for the praiseworthy efforts being made by scientists and engineers dedicated to finding solutions to man-made problems. But a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly. We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.

Blame the media.

Real relationships with others, with all the challenges they entail, now tend to be replaced by a type of internet communication which enables us to choose or eliminate relationships at whim, thus giving rise to a new type of contrived emotion which has more to do with devices and displays than with other people and with nature.

This lack of physical contact and encounter, encouraged at times by the disintegration of our cities, can lead to a numbing of conscience and to tendentious analyses which neglect parts of reality….We have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.

But let’s not forget that technology is a wonderful thing.

Humanity has entered a new era in which our technical prowess has brought us to a crossroads. We are the beneficiaries of two centuries of enormous waves of change: steam engines, railways, the telegraph, electricity, automobiles, aeroplanes, chemical industries, modern medicine, information technology and, more recently, the digital revolution, robotics, biotechnologies and nanotechnologies. It is right to rejoice in these advances and to be excited by the immense possibilities which they continue to open up before us, for “science and technology are wonderful products of God-given human creativity.”

…until it takes over people’s lives.

Our freedom fades when it is handed over to the blind forces of the unconscious, of immediate needs, of self-interest, and of violence. In this sense, we stand naked and exposed in the face of our ever-increasing power, lacking the wherewithal to control it. We have certain superficial mechanisms, but we cannot claim to have a sound ethics, a culture and spirituality genuinely capable of setting limits and teaching clear-minded self-restraint.

Seriously, stop looking at your phone.

A constant flood of new consumer goods can baffle the heart and prevent us from cherishing each thing and each moment. To be serenely present to each reality, however small it may be, opens us to much greater horizons of understanding and personal fulfillment.

The richer are getting richer by screwing the world’s poor and the environment.

The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them, yet this is not the case where ecological debt is concerned. In different ways, developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future.

God did not say people could do whatever they wanted to Earth.

We are not God. The earth was here before us and it has been given to us. This allows us to respond to the charge that Judaeo-Christian thinking, on the basis of the Genesis account which grants man “dominion” over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), has encouraged the unbridled exploita- tion of nature by painting him as domineering and destructive by nature. This is not a correct interpretation of the Bible as understood by the Church.

When nature is viewed solely as a source of profit and gain, this has serious consequences for society. This vision of “might is right” has engendered immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence against the majority of humanity, since resources end up in the hands of the first comer or the most powerful: the winner takes all.

The natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone. If we make something our own, it is only to administer it for the good of all. If we do not, we burden our consciences with the weight of having denied the existence of others.

Mistreatment of the environment is as bad as a lot of really bad stuff, like child abuse and stem cells.

The culture of relativism is the same disorder which drives one person to take advantage of another, to treat others as mere objects, imposing forced labour on them or enslaving them to pay their debts. The same kind of thinking leads to the sexual exploitation of children and abandonment of the elderly who no longer serve our interests. It is also the mindset of those who say: Let us allow the invisible forces of the market to regulate the economy, and consider their impact on society and nature as collateral damage.

Seriously, lay off the embryonic stem cell research.

There is a tendency to justify transgressing all boundaries when experimentation is carried out on living human embryos. We forget that the inalienable worth of a human being transcends his or her degree of development.

And how about a little more open-mindedness for transgender people?

Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. Also, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude which would seek “to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it”.

The Pope wants to talk this out.

There are certain environmental issues where it is not easy to achieve a broad consensus. Here I would state once more that the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics. But I am concerned to encourage an honest and open debate so that particular interests or ideologies will not prejudice the common good.

Leak of Pope’s Encyclical on Climate Change Hints at Tensions in Vatican

By JIM YARDLEY and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

Source: The New York Times

ROME — The unexpected leak of Pope Francis’ much-anticipated environmental encyclical has meant the return of something that not long ago was fairly common around the Vatican but had become often dormant during the two-plus years of Francis’ mostly charmed papacy: intrigue.

Who leaked it and why? Was this the work of frustrated conservatives in the Vatican, as some experts have speculated? Does it portend big fights at a pivotal October meeting in which church officials are expected to grapple with homosexuality and divorce? Or is it just a tempest in a teapot?

“Somebody inside the Vatican leaked the document with the obvious intention of embarrassing the pope,” said Robert Mickens, a longtime Vatican expert and editor of Global Pulse, an online Catholic magazine.

 The Vatican press office was tense on Tuesday. Hours after a draft of the encyclical was published Monday on the website of L’Espresso, an Italian magazine, the Vatican indefinitely revoked the credentials of Sandro Magister, the journalist who wrote a short introduction that accompanied the magazine’s publication of the draft. Vatican officials say the leaked draft is not the final version of the encyclical, which has been barred from release until Thursday.

Leaks are hardly uncommon in journalism — some would consider them sustenance — and Vatican journalism has been no exception. Most recently, Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy was undermined when his butler leaked documents, in an episode known as VatiLeaks, that exposed infighting and discord in the Vatican. The scandal is considered one of the reasons that Benedict resigned, leading to the March 2013 election of Francis.

With global interest in the Francis encyclical — titled “Laudato Si’,” or “Be Praised” — the Vatican had prepared a major media rollout, with a news conference on Thursday morning and the release of the final document. That has now lost some of its steam. Tempers flared inside the Vatican press office on Tuesday, both among staff members and among a handful of reporters, who criticized others for breaking what they saw as an inviolable promise not to publish before Thursday.

The immediate focus of attention was Mr. Magister, who writes a widely read blog about the Vatican on the L’Espresso website and is known as one of Francis’ toughest critics. Mr. Magister said he was simply following orders: He wrote a short introduction to the draft after his boss, Luigi Vicinanza, L’Espresso’s editor, got a copy and decided to go public.

“Sure,” Mr. Magister said in an interview, “I’m the one who got suspended. I violated a pledge not to break the embargo. So I didn’t object to the suspension.”

Mr. Vicinanza said he had written on Tuesday to the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, explaining that he, not Mr. Magister, was responsible for posting the draft. Mr. Vicinanza told the Vatican spokesman that he did not feel bound to respect the embargo because he had not received the text from the Vatican. He declined to say where he had gotten it.

“There’s no intrigue, just journalism,” Mr. Vicinanza said in a telephone interview.

Many journalists agreed that under similar circumstances, they, too, would have posted the draft. But several Vatican analysts on Tuesday also argued that it was no coincidence that the draft had found its way to Mr. Magister. He wrote a June 1 column that criticized the alleged “inspirers” of the encyclical as being advocates of abortion. He has characterized the Vatican news media as being soft on Francis, while also criticizing the pope on foreign policy and as being overly fixated on himself.

“The light is all for him, the pope,” Mr. Magister wrote in April 2014. “Not the institution, but the person.”

Giacomo Galeazzi, a Vatican expert who writes for La Stampa, a Turin newspaper, said the leak could have come from prelates in the Roman Curia, the governing body of the Vatican, which Francis is trying to reform. In an interview, Mr. Galeazzi argued that the pope’s enemies on the outside “want to weaken the encyclical’s message, while those inside want to weaken the figure of the pope.”

Mr. Galeazzi also noted that L’Espresso had published several critical articles of the encyclical in recent weeks, which he called “a pre-emptive strike to an encyclical that has already broken one record: It is the first to be attacked even before it has been published.”

Alberto Melloni, a liberal scholar and Vatican historian, said the leak reflected the continuing tension inside the Vatican, where some entrenched members of the Curia remain resistant to changes that Francis is trying to pursue. Leaking the draft was a way of demonstrating that the Vatican remains in some ways dysfunctional while also tainting Francis’ reformist credentials, Mr. Melloni said.

“This shows the daily fight he has to fight,” he said.

The big showdown is expected in October, when Francis will convene a major synod at Vatican City to discuss issues related to the theme of family. Much is under discussion, including the question of whether divorced Catholics should be allowed to receive communion. The synod is expected to be a hotly contested event, and many analysts saw the leaked encyclical as a piece of this larger struggle.

Marco Politi, a Vatican analyst and author of “Pope Francis Among the Wolves,” said tensions had been steadily rising in recent months, especially since Francis delivered a stern address in December, accusing members of the Roman Curia of careerism and hypocrisy. A few months later, Mr. Politi noted, documents were leaked showing the expenditures made by Cardinal George Pell, the man appointed by Francis to tighten control of the Vatican’s budgets.

“This was a sign of this inner battle over the policies of Pell to control all the budgets of the departments,” Mr. Politi said.

Despite it all, most analysts doubted that the leak would bring much, if any, damage to Francis. One senior Vatican official took it in stride, playing down conspiracy theories while pointing out that journalists just want scoops.

“It has happened before, and it will undoubtedly happen again,” the Vatican official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. “It is not the best situation, but it is not the end of the world.”

Nor is Francis alone. In July 1968, Time magazine got a leaked copy of Pope Paul VI’s much-hyped encyclical on birth control, “Humanae Vitae.” According to the book “Keepers of the Keys,” by Wilton Wynn, a former Time bureau chief in Rome, an “unknown man” arrived at the Time office with a copy for sale. Mr. Wynn said his staff verified its authenticity and gave the man about $500, “which he gladly took and scampered away.”

Time then had a world exclusive: Paul VI had said no to birth control pills.

 Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Rome.