Many of the presidential candidates have greeted Pope Francis’s arrival on US soil with attempts to hitch his message to their own campaigns and concerns.
Republican candidate and former Florida governor Jeb Bush wrote a commentary piece for CNN expressing his excitement about the pope’s visit to the US and explaining the effect Catholicism had had on his life since he converted to the faith 20 years ago.
“Catholicism has grounded my own life. In Catholic teachings, the family is a ‘domestic church’, and the Catholic faithful are a kind of extended family,” he wrotre. “The Catholic Church has always bound my own family together.”
In June, Bush joined climate change deniers and members of the coal industry in a conservative backlash against the pope for his encyclical on climate change. Francis earlier on Wednesday called for a social movement to tackle global warming while speaking alongside Barack Obama at the White House. Bush said in June that when it came to climate change, he would not be guided by the church. “I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope,” the former Florida governor said.
Bush did not mention climate change in his CNN piece on Tuesday, but he wrote of the pontiff: “The pundits would like to make him out to be a politician, but his charge is much greater than that: he is the spiritual leader to the largest group of Christians on Earth and an inspiration to all people of good will.”
Bush’s fellow Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee found fault with Obama for the guests he had invited to Francis’s welcoming ceremony.
In a Daily Caller op-ed, Huckabee criticized the White House for inviting Sister Simone Campbell, an activist nun and Guardian contributor, Bishop Gene Robinson, a gay former Episcopal bishop, and transgender activist Vivian Taylor. (The guest list has not been made public but was expected to run to 15,000 people.)
“Welcoming a pro-life, pro-marriage leader at the White House with a crowd of abortion and gay rights activists is as classy as hosting an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with an open bar,” Huckabee wrote. He also tweeted about his dissatisfaction with the White House several times.
I'm not a Catholic, but as a Christian and American I believe @Pontifex deserves much better. And so do the American people. #PopeInUS
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) September 22, 2015
I welcome @Pontifex to America & offer my apologies that @POTUS will not offer him the warm, respectful welcome he deserves #PopeInUS
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) September 22, 2015
Texas senator Ted Cruz tweeted a piece he wrote for The Federalist in which he paid tribute to Pope Francis for taking a lead on social issues such as abortion, marriage and religious liberty and urged people to “speak boldly” on issues such as family and faith.
“Especially in a country founded upon religious freedom, we must unequivocally stand for life and marriage and the right to worship. If we do not protect these liberties here, how will we defend those who lack basic human rights abroad?” Cruz wrote.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders yesterday expressed his delight at Francis’s arrival and forthcoming speech to Congress on Thursday. Sanders called on his fellow members of Congress to act on Francis’s message regarding global economic inequality.
“The pope has played, in my view, an extraordinary role since assuming his position in speaking with courage and brilliance about some of the most important issues facing our world,” Sanders said on the Senate floor, adding on Twitter:
Pope Francis is calling for a social and economic system that lives in harmony with nature, not one that destroys the planet. #PopeInDC
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 23, 2015
His fellow Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley wrote in the National Catholic Reporter that Francis’s message was energizing.
The former Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor, who is Catholic, said the US should heed the pope’s message to “embrace those who have been marginalized by poverty or discrimination” and welcome no fewer than 65,000 Syrian refugees next year.
“We cannot forget what it means to struggle and toil and yearn for a better life beyond the next horizon; we have a moral responsibility to act,” O’Malley wrote.
