Francis cites Catholic left as model for Republican Congress

Making history today as the first Pope to address Congress, Francis held up two radical figures from the Catholic left as examples of inspiration for United States’ legislators. 

In his speech to a packed Joint Session of US Congress that applauded his arrival into the chamber, Francis said that he wanted to offer to the Republican-dominated body four Americans who “offer us a way of seeing and interpreting reality” and cited Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, and Thomas Merton, the monk-activist spiritual writer. 

The other two were Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. 

Day (1897-1980) and Merton (1915-68) combined a radical political activism - which many congressmen would consider dangerously left wing - with a deep prayer life. 

Both were converts to Catholicism, wrote widely read accounts of their spiritual journeys and had personal lives which might be described as “very human”: Day had an abortion and was a single mother while Merton fell in love with an engaged woman who nursed him following a back operation.   

Pope Francis cited Day, an advocate of economic distributism, as an example of social activism with a “passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed”. On Merton, the Pope described the monk as “a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church”.

The pair were active opponents of war and would have supported the Pope’s denunciation of the arms trade, which he described in his congress speech as motivated by “money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood”.

His Congress speech continued with themes that have become part of his US visit: climate change, economic justice, immigration and the family.

Most notably on his way into the chamber he warmly shook hands with John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, who has been vocal in supporting the Pope's stance on climate change.

Pope Francis receives a warm welcome from Congress (PA)

The Pope once again described himself as the “son of immigrants” and urged Congress to welcome those who travel to the US to pursue their dreams. He added that the world was facing a refugee crisis “of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War.” And tomorrow, when he is in New York, Francis will meet an immigrant family in East Harlem who left Mexico for a new life in America. 

“We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners,” the Pope said. “We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible, as we educate new generations not to turn their back on our “neighbours” and everything around us.