Local representatives react positively to Pope Francis’ speech to Congress

While English is not his most comfortable language, Francis’s comments to that flock needed little interpretation. But there is something else that draws the least religious generation in American history to the Catholic leader of the world.

“I’m not a believer in climate change”, he said. Yet he listened carefully to the Papal address to Congress Thursday, “to get a sense of the gravity of all this”. He didn’t explicitly criticize Wall Street or American capitalist excess, but instead said that “business is a noble vocation” that has a public responsibility to create jobs that make families and society stronger, not perpetuate cycles of poverty. “It’s that (Francis) is preaching a value system that is about mutual accountability, people looking out for each other and not dismissing the poor, which should be a universal issue”. Their roars of approval could be heard from a distance down Pennsylvania Avenue.

While delivering the first address from a pontiff to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, Pope Francis touched on topics ranging from the plight of immigrants to climate change and the death penalty.

Dinora Orozco Vedadi, 28, born in the United States to Mexican parents, said she was of Catholic origin but admitted she did not go to church. “And that’s what pastors do, and I thought he did it very appropriately”. “He’s going back to the example of Jesus”.

The pope does not want to direct Catholic voting, and it is unrealistic to expect him to end partisan wrangling after a two-day visit. “We think this is the flawless place for Pope Francis to be”. He has brought to his task an enlightenment and a commitment to preach a gospel of change that is timely and courageous. After a few minutes, the Pope appeared with a group of bishops, and the people again cheered loudly.

These are folks, as Francis would say, on the peripheries.

“On this continent”, he said, “thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities”.

The pope arrived in Washington on Tuesday on his first-ever trip to the U.S.

“He’s a pope of the people”.

“It was a very special day”, he said.

He said China is “doing nothing” to reduce greenhouse gases.

“Overall things look good” for NJ Transit rail, light rail and bus executive director Ronnie Hakim tells New Jersey 101.5.

The Pope encouraged the children to live with joy in their hearts.

“It has had a positive experience on my life”, Rocha, of Orlando, Fla., recalled of the time when, as a young boy in Ecuador, he caught a glimpse of Pope John Paul II as the pontiff passed by. Yet Francis spoke to a Congress that has deadlocked on immigration legislation, at a time when there are more than 11 million people in the USA illegally, and where some lawmakers have balked at Obama administration plans to accept more of the migrants from Syria and elsewhere who are now flooding Europe. “He doesn’t just choose the Catholics”, Gamero said. I had four childhood friends who were deprived of their calling to the priesthood because they fell in love with a woman and wished to marry. He then boarded a helicopter that whisked him to a lower Manhattan heliport, where a motorcade – he in his signature simple Fiat hatchback – took him up the FDR Drive. “People are just so enthused to have someone who is so humble and holy be in your presence”. But Francis could help to ease political tensions within American Catholicism. I know that many Americans today, as in the past, are working to deal with this problem.

Alfaro praised the pope’s ability to engage a diverse audience, be it on immigration or climate change – another central theme of his visit.

What the world really needs, Francis argued, is a renewed sense of sacrifice for the common good and solidarity between the rich and poor, races and religions, the powerful and powerless.