Pope to Address the Humble and the Powerful Alike in a Three-City U.S. Visit





A center for the homeless. A school in East Harlem. A prison.

The first visit by Pope Francis to the United States, in September, will bring him as might be expected to the halls of power, but it will also put him in front of more humble audiences in three major Northeast cities. He will spend time with the homeless in Washington, immigrant children in New York and inmates in Philadelphia, according to an itinerary of his trip released by the Vatican on Tuesday.

The schedule underscores the way Francis has sought to use his papacy to focus attention on those on society’s margins. But it also offers hints of the ways a pope, unafraid of entering the political fray, might use his charisma and uncommon personal touch to challenge the American establishment on matters as varied as prison reform, environmental degradation and the ills of capitalism.

He will go from a historic address to Congress to a charity center in Washington, and from the Curran-Fromhold prison in Philadelphia to a Mass for a worldwide gathering of Catholic families in the city. The trip, which a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York said was the pope’s first visit to the United States, offers him a chance to spread his popularity in a country where his unassuming leadership style is already widely admired.

And, for observers who have studied his papacy, the prospect of a pope’s sounding a clarion call for change on issues like the climate and economic inequality, in a country that he believes bears part of the blame for those problems, is tantalizing.

“I’m very interested in seeing how he’s going to make all people of different political persuasions squirm,” said Kevin Ahern, an assistant professor of religious studies at Manhattan College. “If people listen carefully to his address in Congress or other places, I’m fairly certain he says things that remind Americans of their responsibility in relation to injustice in the world.”

His address to a joint meeting of Congress on Sept. 24, a first for a pope, will be widely watched for invocations of his most recent papal encyclical, which offered a blistering critique of consumerism and irresponsible development, framing a call for action on climate change. The invitation to address Congress from the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a Republican, came as a surprise to some observers, given the pope’s emphasis on social inequality and other issues more often embraced by political liberals.

But Dr. Ahern said the pope’s decision to deliver the address, despite differences with both Democrats and Republicans on issues like same-sex marriage and immigration, reflects a willingness to offend the political establishment, as he did when the Vatican recently recognized Palestine as a state.

“There are very few figures in global politics that have that sense of freedom,” Dr. Ahern said.

Francis will also address the United Nations during a major summit meeting on sustainable development goals, 50 years after Pope Paul VI became the first pope to address the institution. That visit was credited with renewing the relationship between the Catholic Church and the United Nations.

The pope will send another symbolic message when he visits a classroom at Our Lady Queen of Angels, a school of 290 students in East Harlem, many from low-income families. He will also meet with immigrants and refugees who had been assisted by Catholic Charities, including day laborers and a group of unaccompanied minors who formed a soccer league in the Bronx. The parish connected to the school was shuttered during a restructuring in 2007, reflecting challenges facing the Catholic Church in this country, with declining attendance and dwindling numbers of priests.

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, told reporters on Tuesday, “He wanted to see, and these were his words, ‘an inner-city Catholic school.’ He said, ‘I’ve heard a lot about that.’ ”

The principal, Joanne Walsh, said she learned the school had been chosen only when a reporter called her Tuesday morning. “It’s an honor and a blessing,” she said.

After celebrating Mass at Madison Square Garden and then traveling to Philadelphia, Francis is set to meet with inmates and their families at a prison in Northeast Philadelphia on Sept. 27. The visit is reminiscent of the pope’s decision on his first Holy Thursday to wash the feet of inmates at Rome’s main prison.

The prison in Philadelphia, which currently houses 2,761 inmates, is the largest in the city’s system. “He will see the facility in operation as it is,” said Mark McDonald, a spokesman for the city’s mayor, Michael A. Nutter. He will later celebrate Mass at the conclusion of the World Meeting of Families, the centerpiece of his trip.

They are not the usual destinations for a pope, but zipping from the Financial District to East Harlem, and from a prison to a major Mass, promises to give him a view of the contours of American life. The visits would also give him opportunities to use his Spanish, a recognition both of the growing Hispanic presence in the Catholic Church and, Cardinal Dolan said, of the pope’s timidity using English.

“I said to him: ‘Well, Holy Father, first of all, your English isn’t that bad. No. 2, if you speak Spanish, a third of our people are going to be jumping up and down,’ ” Cardinal Dolan said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/01/nyregion/pope-francis-united-states-visit.html?action=click&contentCollection=Travel&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article