Pope Francis to Congress: 'Stop fighting, start working!'

c. 2015 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS) In his historic speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday (September 24), Pope Francis seemed to heed warnings to tame his often fiery rhetoric on topics such as capitalism and climate change. But his State of the Union-style address—the first ever to the House and Senate by a Roman pontiff—was in the end cold comfort to conservatives who had hoped their sharp criticisms might influence his agenda.

Instead, in a nearly hourlong speech, Francis carefully laid out a vision of political cooperation for the common good—one that highlighted economic injustice as a chief threat to family life, that stressed the moral imperative to care for the environment, that denounced profits “drenched in blood” from the arms industry and that forcefully argued for America to welcome, not reject, immigrants.