The politics of a papal visit
Remembering the partisan bids to weaponized Francis' Congressional address, and hoping for better to come
The papacy of Pope Francis encompassed a little less than half of my 16 years in Congress, but he loomed much larger over American politics than his predecessors did during this period.
One historic event, Francis’s address to a joint session of Congress on September 24, 2015, encapsulated a great deal of the interplay of his papacy with politics.
On February 5, 2015, Speaker of the House John Boehner announced that Francis would be the first pope to visit the Capitol to speak to Congress and the nation. The invitation officially came from Boehner and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, two powerful Catholics who exemplified the partisan divide in the church.
Pope Francis was an extremely popular figure in America — 70 percent approval overall, 90 percent with Catholics — so both sides wanted to claim he was with them.
With zero-sum partisan politics always at play, each party also sought to show the pope was scolding the other. Since neither party fully embraces Catholic social teaching, each could choose their preferred issues and use something the pope said as a partisan cudgel.