In Philadelphia, pope pays tribute to a native saint

Pope Francis today paid tribute to Philadelphia’s own Saint Katharine Drexel, who as a young heiress used her fortune to build missions and schools for the poor.

Celebrating Mass in the Philadelphia cathedral shortly after his arrival in the city on Saturday, the pope said the story of Katharine Drexel held a lesson for the way the church should challenge people.

While touring Europe in 1887, Drexel met with Pope Leo XIII and asked for more missionaries to Native Americans. Pope Leo responded pointedly, “What about you? What are you going to do?”

Later that year Drexel made an extended visit to Indian missions in the western United States. She eventually founded an order of sisters, using her inheritance to build convents and schools for African-Americans in the South and Native Americans in the Southwest.

In his homily, Pope Francis said Pope Leo had known how to spark a tremendous personal change, and that modern church leaders should also finds ways to lead people to share their “enthusiasm and gifts with our communities.”

“Those words – ‘What about you?’ – were addressed to a young person, a young woman with high ideals, and they changed her life. They made her think of the immense work that had to be done, and to realize that she was being called to do her part,” the pope said.

“How many young people in our parishes and schools have the same high ideals, generosity of spirit, and love for Christ and the church! Do we challenge them? Do we make space for them and help them to do their part?” he said.

This lesson is especially valuable today, the pope said, because the church increasingly needs lay people engaged in its mission. A “sense of collaboration and shared responsibility” with lay people is needed, he said.

“We know that the future of the church in a rapidly changing society will call, and even now calls, for a much more active engagement on the part of the laity,” he said.

And in a shout-out to the contribution of women, he added: “In a particular way, it means valuing the immense contribution which women, lay and religious, have made and continue to make, to the life of our communities.”

In a particular way, it means valuing the immense contribution which women, lay and religious, have made and continue to make, to the life of our communities.

Pope Francis’ somewhat different take on religious liberty

Well, that was interesting.

At the official “religious freedom” event during his U.S. visit, Pope Francis never mentioned the U.S. bishops’ “Fortnight for Freedom” campaigns, nor their battles over alleged religious discrimination on Obamacare provisions and conscience protection issues.

The bishops have certainly made this a priority. Here was Archbishop William E. Lori last June asking the faithful to support their efforts:

“Religious institutions in the United States are in danger of losing their freedom to hire for mission and their freedom to defend the family…. Endangered is the freedom of church ministries to provide employee benefits and to provide adoptions and refugee services in accord with the church’s teaching on faith and morals. It is one thing for others to disagree with the church’s teaching but quite another to discriminate against the rights of believers to practice our faith, not just in word but in the way we conduct our daily life, ministry and business.”

Perhaps a detailed analysis of these matters was never in the cards for Pope Francis. At the White House the other day, he did offer generic backing for the bishops, encouraging the defense of religious freedom from “everything that would threaten or compromise it.” And he made a brief, symbolic stop at the Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order that is suing over the Obamacare provisions on contraception coverage.

If the bishops were looking for something more explicit in Philadelphia, the pope went in a different and more philosophical direction: “Uniformity.”

It’s a word that’s popped up more than once during the pope’s U.S. visit. Clearly, the pope doesn’t like it. As he said at the 9/11 Memorial Friday, religious leaders should be “opposing every attempt to create a rigid uniformity.”

But what exactly is he talking about?

Today in Philadelphia we got some explanation. Citing the French Jesuit scholar Michel de Certeau, the pope said the big threat to religious liberty today comes from “a uniformity that the egotism of the powerful, the conformism of the weak, or the ideology of the utopian would seek to impose on us.”

The pope then explained how this uniformity emerges in the modern age, going back to a concept he expressed in his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Sì.

“We live in a world subject to the ‘globalization of the technocratic paradigm,’ which consciously aims at a one-dimensional uniformity and seeks to eliminate all differences and traditions in a superficial quest for unity,” he said.

To resist that movement, he said, religions have a duty to promote a healthy pluralism in which differences are respected and valued. The pope evidently sees such pluralism as the antidote to the push for uniformity.

“In a world where various forms of modern tyranny seek to suppress religious freedom, or try to reduce it to a subculture without right to a voice in the public square, or to use religion as a pretext for hatred and brutality, it is imperative that the followers of the various religions join their voices in calling for peace, tolerance and respect for the dignity and rights of others,” he said.

He noted that the Quakers who founded Philadelphia aimed to establish a colony that would be a “haven of religious freedom and tolerance.”

I doubt if all the pope’s deep-thinking points were picked up by the massive crowd that filled Independence Mall, a three-block area that is considered the cradle of American democracy.

They applauded when he spoke about the Declaration of Independence and its affirmation that all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that governments exist to protect those rights. He spoke at a lecturn used by Abraham Lincoln when he gave the Gettysburg Address.

“Those ringing words continue to inspire us today, even as they have inspired peoples throughout the world to fight for the freedom to live in accordance with their dignity,” the pope said.

But he added that U.S. history also shows that these principles must constantly be re-affirmed and defended. As examples, he cited the abolition of slavery, the extension of voting rights, the growth of the labor movement, and “the gradual effort to eliminate every kind of racism and prejudice directed at successive waves of new Americans.”

The event was billed as a “meeting for religious freedom with the Hispanic community and other immigrants,” and the Latin American pope returned to the theme of immigration at the end of his talk, delighting his audience when he told them: “Never be ashamed of your traditions.”

“Many of you have emigrated to this country at great personal cost, but in the hope of building a new life. Do not be discouraged by whatever challenges and hardships you face. I ask you not to forget that, like those who came here before you, you bring many gifts to your new nation,” he said.

At the United Nations, the pope ‘makes it personal’ on war, economics and the environmen

In the middle of his address to the United Nations today, Pope Francis called international leaders to an “examination of conscience.” In every situation of conflict, he said, “real human beings take precedence over partisan interests, however legitimate the latter may be.”

“In wars and conflicts there are individual persons, our brothers and sisters, men and women, young and old, boys and girls who weep, suffer and die. Human beings who are easily discarded when our only response is to draw up lists of problems, strategies and disagreements,” he said.

These few lines encapsulate the pope’s entire outlook, whether in international affairs or in the way the church conducts its mission. It is a “make it personal” approach, and it is key to understanding this man and his papacy.

The speech was, as expected, largely an explanation of the church’s take on global problems including war, economics, ecology and the drug trade.

In a clear reference to violence by ISIS, the pope made a particular plea on behalf of Christians in the Middle East and Africa, who he said have been “forced to witness the destruction of their places of worship, their cultural and religious heritage, their houses and property, and have faced the alternative either of fleeing or of paying for their adhesion to good and to peace by their own lives, or by enslavement.”

Perhaps with the situation in the Middle East in mind, the pope gave the United Nations a mixed review on war and peace issues. In the course of its 70-year history, he said, the United Nations has proven capable of heading off conflicts through dialogue and negotiation.

But on some occasions, he added, the U.N. charter has been used as a pretext, releasing “uncontrollable forces which gravely harm defenseless populations, the cultural milieu and even the biological environment.”

He called for urgent efforts to work for a “complete prohibition” on nuclear weapons, drawing applause from the U.N. assembly. He offered strong support for the recent nuclear deal with Iran, saying the agreement was proof that political good will and patience can yield results.

One of the most powerful moments came when the pope spoke of environmental damage, citing his own “grave responsibility” to speak out about an issue that is crucial for humanity’s future.

The ecological crisis and the large-scale destruction of biodiversity, he said, are the result of “irresponsible mismanagement of the global economy,” and can threaten the very existence of the human species.

He tied environmental devastation to a “relentless process of exclusion” that has its greatest impact on the poor:

In effect, a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged, either because they are differently abled (handicapped), or because they lack adequate information and technical expertise, or are incapable of decisive political action. Economic and social exclusion is a complete denial of human fraternity and a grave offense against human rights and the environment. The poorest are those who suffer most from such offenses, for three serious reasons: they are cast off by society, forced to live off what is discarded and suffer unjustly from the abuse of the environment. They are part of today’s widespread and quietly growing “culture of waste.”

Throughout the speech, the Latin American pope was a voice for the poor, especially when talking about economics. While praising the United Nations’ efforts in general, he was critical of the organization’s agencies and mechanisms that deal with economic crises.

He called for measures to make sure that developing countries are not subject to “oppressive lending systems which, far from promoting progress, subject people to mechanisms which generate greater poverty, exclusion and dependence.” Here, the pope appeared to be speaking from his own experience in Argentina, where economic collapse more than 15 years ago was followed by austerity measures demanded by international lenders.

Restoring hope for the world’s marginalized cannot be a matter of solutions dictated by the powerful, the pope said. “To enable these real men and women to escape from extreme poverty, we must allow them to be dignified agents of their own destiny.”

At the same time, he said, government leaders have a responsibility to protect basic rights needed for human development. The absolute minimum is lodging, labor and land, as well as spiritual freedom, which includes the right to education – including education for girls, which is denied in some places, he said.

Citing his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, and his own recent encyclical on ecology, the pope said that defense of the environment and the fight against exclusion demand that we recognize “a moral law written into human nature itself, one which includes the natural difference between man and woman, and absolute respect for life in all its stages and dimensions