Pelosi calls pope meeting ‘spiritual, personal and official’ honour

Monday, October 11th, 2021

Nancy Pelosi, the US Speaker of the House had a private audience with Pope Francis, a meeting she called “a spiritual, personal and official honour.”

“His Holiness’s leadership is a source of joy and hope for Catholics and for all people, challenging each of us to be good stewards of God’s creation, to act on climate, to embrace the refugee, the immigrant and the poor, and to recognise the dignity and divinity in everyone,” Pelosi said in a statement.

Pelosi was accompanied by her husband, Paul, and by Patrick Connell, the Charges d’Affaires of the United States Embassy to the Holy See. Connell is heading embassy operations awaiting Senate confirmation of former Indiana Sen. Joseph Donnelly as President Joe Biden’s new envoy to the Vatican.

Along with Pope Francis, Pelosi on Saturday met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Vatican secretary for relations with states.

In Pelosi’s statement on her visit with Pope Francis, she called his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ a “powerful challenge to the global community to act decisively on the climate crisis with special attention to the most vulnerable communities.”

Pelosi also spoke of Pope Francis’s significance to her home diocese.

“In San Francisco, we take special pride in Pope Francis, who shares the namesake of our city and whose song of St. Francis is our anthem. ‘Lord, make me a channel of thy peace. Where there is darkness, may we bring light. Where there is hatred, may we bring love. Where there is despair, may we bring hope’,” Pelosi said.

Despite ongoing tensions between Nancy Pelosi and a portion of the US Bishops’ Conference over her pro-abortion stance, the meeting with Pope Francis did not raise the controversial topic

Pelosi is in Rome for a Parliamentary Speakers’ Summit ahead of the G20 as well a meeting of parliamentary leaders before of the UN Climate Change Summit (COP20) next month in Glasgow.

On Friday, the Vatican announced that the pope would not be going to Glasgow but that its delegation would be headed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the secretary of state.