Pope Francis issues final call for unity before leaving US at end of historic visit

With a sign of the cross from the steps of his plane, Pope Francis concluded a historic visit to the US on Sunday night, taking off from Philadelphia and heading back to Rome after six days which enraptured – and challenged – his hosts.

Sep 28, 2015

PHILADELPHIA, Pa: With a sign of the cross from the steps of his plane, Pope Francis concluded a historic visit to the US on Sunday night, taking off from Philadelphia and heading back to Rome after six days which enraptured – and challenged – his hosts.

The pontiff boarded an American Airlines plane at 7.30pm and waved goodbye from the window after a dramatic final day that brought Philadelphia to a standstill.

“This land has been blessed with tremendous gifts and opportunities. I pray that you may all be good and generous stewards of the human and material resources entrusted to you,” he said, in farewell remarks. “I will pray for you and your families, and I ask you, please, to pray for me. May God bless you all. God bless America!”

A mass on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on Sunday drew more than a million people under an autumn sky for the final act of his US tour. The city transformed into a thrumming sea of people who had journeyed from across the Americas to witness, pray and rejoice here, producing a dramatic coda to a visit which took the pontiff closer to the centres of US power and history than any of his predecessors.

Before flying back to Rome overnight Francis used his final homily to speak not as a political figure but as a pastor, exhorting the Catholic church to show more tolerance, openness and inclusiveness – driving home a message he also brought to the White House, Congress and the United Nations over six eventful days.

Energised by an ecstatic welcome in Philadelphia – it greeted him with the Rocky theme song – the so-called people’s pope cited Moses and Jesus to criticise a “narrow” approach to faith. This was a coded rebuke to certain colleagues in the Vatican, the US and elsewhere ahead of October’s synod on the family in Rome, which will shape church policy.

“The temptation to be scandalized by the freedom of God, who sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, bypassing bureaucracy, officialdom and inner circles, threatens the authenticity of faith. Hence it must be vigorously rejected,” he said, speaking Spanish. To raise doubts about faith in those who are not “like us” was a dangerous temptation, Francis said. “Not only does it block conversion to the faith; it is a perversion of faith!”

It was a dramatic way to end a first visit to the US which took in Ground Zero, Madison Square Garden, a Harlem school and a jail, a whirlwind of pomp and connection with ordinary people which at times felt like a political campaign, rock star tour and spiritual seminar.

Philadelphia provided a fitting climax. Beholding a crowd local police estimated at more than a million, Francis urged families to show love in ways big and small – themes emblazoned on banners which fluttered in a cool breeze across Philadelphia. “Faith grows when it is lived and shaped by love. That is why our families, our homes, are true domestic churches.”

Faith and family opened a happier, better world, he said. “Our common house can no longer tolerate sterile divisions. The urgent challenge of protecting our home includes the effort to bring the entire human family together in the pursuit of a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change.”

Earlier in the day Francis stuck a more sombre note when he sought forgiveness for the church’s sins in a private meeting with five adults sexually abused – some by Catholic clerics – when they were children. “I remain overwhelmed with shame that men entrusted with the tender care of children violated these little ones and caused grievous harm. I am profoundly sorry. God weeps.”

He vowed that those responsible would face justice but some critics were not mollified, saying more was needed to tackle the legacy of decades of abuse and cover-ups.

Francis also visited inmates at Curran-Fromhold correctional facility. He urged them to believe in the power of rehabilitation. “Any society, any family that cannot share or take seriously the pain of its children, and views that pain as something normal or expected, is a society condemned to remain hostage to itself, prey to the very things which cause that pain,” he said.

Later, as the popemobile swept past cheering throngs, Francis beamed, waved and paused to kiss numerous babies. The mass jamboree was organised by the World Meeting of Families, which will next meet in Dublin in 2018.

The homily mesmerized hundreds of thousands beyond the parkway, with Jumbotrons relaying the mass to pilgrims and passersby who gazed, rapt, in the hushed heart of a usually hectic city.

When Francis instructed congregants to exchange a sign of peace the square around city hall broke into handshakes, laughter and hugs between strangers – parish pilgrims bussed in from across the US, hispanic immigrants, locals emerging from sports bars. “Transforming the whole world, this guy,” a pilgrim with Vatican flags told a football fan. “I’m very impressed.”

Battalions of police, state troopers, national guards and other security personnel sealed off Philadelphia to traffic and searched pedestrians with airport-style checks, causing lengthy queues which prevented many entering the parkway.

In one section Brazilians, Dominicans, Poles, Illinoisans, New Yorkers and Virginians shuffled cheek by jowl inches at a time. An exercise in patience, said one woman, from Pennsylvania. “It’s one that I’m failing,” her husband replied.

An Argentinian family which drove a mini-bus 13,000 miles (21,000km) to attend the mass had more luck: a personal encounter with the pope, though he jokingly questioned their sanity. “You are the family who traveled from Buenos Aires? You are crazy.”

The mass capped a day of rapture and poignance for those swept up in a week of pope mania, a public relations triumph during which the 78-year-old Argentinian deftly mixed politics and pageantry to draw attention to his priorities – poverty, injustice, pollution – and to challenge the US to do better.

As dusk fell across the city a motorcade of flashing lights and sirens escorted him to the airport, where he thanked his hosts and organisers and the vice-president, Joe Biden, escorted him to the plane.

The question in the wake of the pope’s departure is how the so-called “Francis effect” will play out in battles over immigration reform, climate change, inequality, unjust incarceration and capital punishment – themes the pope forcefully addressed. Some conservative critics have complained that he soft-pedalled the church’s opposition to abortion and marriage equality.

Francis deflected perceived hostility to the US and capitalism by dressing his exhortations in the language and symbols of US heroes, including the founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.

It worked. He was greeted with adulation and reverence by Barack Obama, a joint session of Congress, the United Nations general assembly and, finally, the city of brotherly love.

Treating immigrants with compassion – a leitmotif of his visit – left many Latinos lining his route to the parkway hopeful about the future, regardless of xenophobia from Donald Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner.

“There won’t be a 180-degree change overnight, or in one month, but I think some people will begin to open their minds,” said Fidel Huerta, 46, a Mexican-born resident of Houston who had travelled with 97 other Latinos from Texas to see the pope. “He came at an important time. We need him.”-- The Guardian