President Obama will welcome Pope Francis to the White House during the pontiff’s U.S. visit in September to “continue the dialogue … on their shared values and commitments on a wide range of issues,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said March 26.
The meeting with the president and first lady will take place on Sept. 23, apparently near the start of a visit — the first to the U.S. by the Argentine pope — that will take Francis from the U.S. Capitol to New York and the United Nations and will conclude with a huge outdoor Mass in Philadelphia.
“During the visit, the President and the Pope will continue the dialogue, which they began during the President’s visit to the Vatican in March 2014, on their shared values and commitments on a wide range of issues,” Earnest said in a statement.
Those issues, he said, include “caring for the marginalized and the poor; advancing economic opportunity for all; serving as good stewards of the environment; protecting religious minorities and promoting religious freedom around the world; and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities.”
This will be the second meeting between the pope and Obama; the two met a year ago at the Vatican, where they began confidential discussions that led to a Vatican-brokered deal to reopen relations between the U.S. and Cuba that was announced last December.
During his U.S. tour, Francis is scheduled to address a joint meeting of Congress the following day, on Sept. 24 — the first pope to do so. He will address the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 25 before heading to Philadelphia for the church’s World Meeting of Families, which will conclude on Sunday, Sept. 27.
Both St. John Paul II (1979) and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (2008) visited the White House during trips to the U.S. Pope Paul VI was the first pontiff to visit the U.S., in 1965. But he only stopped in New York City, where he met President Lyndon Johnson.
U.S. presidents have regularly met with popes at the Vatican, starting with Woodrow Wilson back in 1919. And presidents have often flown to meet a pope who was visiting another part of the country. In 1984, Ronald Reagan met John Paul in Fairbanks, Alaska. Reagan was returning from China and the pope’s plane was making a refueling stop on its return to Rome from a trip to Asia.
David Gibson is an award-winning religion journalist, author, and filmmaker. Via RNS.
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