Pope may ruffle feathers on US/Cuba trip

Pope may ruffle feathers on US/Cuba trip
Caroline Wyatt
Religious affairs correspondent
18 September 2015

Pope Francis's forthcoming nine-day visit to the US and Cuba, which
starts on Saturday, will be his 10th and longest trip abroad yet and,
for the 78-year-old, it is likely to be challenging on many levels.
It is the Argentine-born Pope's first trip to the US and, while he has
attained popularity ratings there that any politician would envy, his
reputation as a Pope for the poor and the vulnerable - and his stance on
saving the environment - has ruffled feathers, especially among
conservatives.

There is also some nervousness in Washington as to what he may say to
representatives of the world's richest country, and in some quarters
puzzlement over the way he does not fit easily into America's "culture
wars" and defies categorisation.
On his three-city tour of the US (Washington, New York and
Philadelphia), this Pope from the southern hemisphere will focus on
immigration, visit a prison and reach out to the poor.
Some liberals are disappointed that he has not done more so far to
reform Catholic teaching on same-sex relationships, despite changing the
tone of the Roman Catholic Church towards gay men and women, and some
campaigners are likely to want to challenge that.
It is not yet clear whether he will meet victims of abuse by Catholic
clerics in America, where the Church has had to pay out millions in
compensation for child abuse and is still facing court cases, although
it is thought likely that he will.

Catholic identity
Pope Francis has also been shifting the meaning of what it is to be
Catholic in the US today.
Under his predecessors, Catholic identity was tied up with opposition to
abortion, a conservative position on marriage and same-sex
relationships, but Pope Francis is changing the emphasis from adherence
to doctrine to what Catholics do to help the poor, immigrants and the
dispossessed.
Paul Vallely is author of Pope Francis: Untying the Knots - subtitled
The Struggle for the Soul of Catholicism.
He said: "Francis is not a liberal. He's a very complicated character.
"He's got some liberal tendencies, but he's got some conservative
tendencies too. He wants to shift the focus from sex to poverty."
There will be many opportunities on this nine-day trip for Pope Francis
to challenge both the faithful and the political classes in Cuba and
America.
He is due to make 26 speeches - eight of them in Cuba and 18 in the US -
and as the Vatican knows all too well, he often veers off-script to
deliver his pastoral wisdom in the down-to-earth language of a parish
priest.

Off-the-cuff remarks
The majority of his speeches will be in Spanish, a tongue in which he is
particularly prone to making off-the-cuff remarks, rather than in his
more halting English, although that is the language he will use to make
his addresses at the White House and Congress and his prayer at the 9/11
memorial.
He is a Pope who has spoken of the need for priests to be "shepherds,
living with the smell of their sheep", something he has put into
practice in his own Papacy, while his exhortations to consume less and
do more for the poor have irritated some on the American right,
especially his remarks that the unbridled pursuit of money is the "dung
of the devil".
On that, he may find an ally in the Castro family, with his first stop
in Cuba likely to see a meeting with Fidel Castro in Havana, if he is
well enough, as well as President Raul Castro.
Although Cuba remains an avowedly agnostic state, its president got on
so well with Pope Francis on his visit to the Vatican earlier this year
that he emerged with a surprising statement.
"If the Pope keeps going the way he's going, I'll go back to praying and
go back to the Church, and I'm not joking," President Castro said after
their talks.
He added: "When the Pope goes to Cuba in September, I promise to go to
all his masses and with satisfaction."

Source: Pope may ruffle feathers on US/Cuba trip - BBC News -
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-34280662