Rome Newsroom, Apr 25, 2024 / 07:22 am (CNA).
Pope Francis is reportedly considering returning to the United States in September to speak before the United Nations General Assembly.
The news was initially reported by the French Catholic newspaper La Croix and has not yet been officially confirmed by the Vatican. A source from the Vatican Secretariat of State, meanwhile, told CNA this week that “a formal invitation has arrived from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and Pope Francis seems inclined to respond positively.”
If the New York trip occurs, the pope would visit the United Nations during its “Summit of the Future,” which the international body will convene from Sept. 22 to 23.
The possible trip to the United States could change the pope’s already-busy September travel schedule. The Holy See Press Office has announced that Pope Francis will be in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, and Singapore from Sept. 2-13.
Pope Francis is also expected at the end of September in Belgium, where he is scheduled to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the University of Louvain, which has been divided into two different linguistic entities since the 1960s. The Holy Father told Mexican television network Televisa last December that he intended to travel to Belgium in 2024.
According to a source familiar with the planning of papal trips, Pope Francis’ trip to Louvain could be postponed to 2025. The postponement of the journey would leave room at the end of September for the visit to the United Nations.
During his planned stay in Belgium, Pope Francis will also celebrate Mass at the national shrine of Koelkenberg. There are also rumors that the pontiff will stop in Luxembourg, one of the small nations favored by the pope for trips to Europe. Luxembourg officials have denied the visit, but the Vatican Secretariat of State has indicated the trip is possible
The September summit’s objective is to strengthen the structures of the United Nations and global “governance” to face more fully the “new and old challenges” of the coming years, the UN has said.
The meeting will lead a “pact for the future” to advance rapidly toward realizing the UN’s “Sustainable Development Goals.”
In a meeting with students in April, Pope Francis described the summit as “an important event,” with the Holy Father urging students to help ensure the plan “becomes concrete and is implemented through processes and actions for change.”
Pope Francis, who is 87, has undergone two surgeries in the last four years and is under regular medical screening. A planned trip to Abu Dhabi to participate in the COP28 meeting was canceled last December due to health reasons.
The pope was last in the United States in 2015, during which he also appeared before the United Nations.
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Francis, just stay in your own diocese. You’re the bishop of Rome and not the bishop for the entire Catholic Church. Each of us has our own bishop, thank you.
Well that’s very Episcopalian.
But very true, nonetheless.
In the minds of some, the UN is like the Church. How could Francis possibly deny himself communion with like-minded adherents of “peace and prosperity for people and the planet?” The seeker may even glimpse the glory of a specific type of salvation through work on sustainable development goals.
How could Francis deny himself “communion”, whatever that means, with like-minded adherents of “peace and prosperity for people and the planet?” A “glimpse of the glory of a specific type of salvation….”
Do you mean unification with the demonic goals of the U.N. policies that promote such things as the mass murder of the unborn, which Francis has indirectly sanctioned in the past, insisting Catholics get on board with U.N. population planning policies, and their globalist tyranny advocacies that destroy the prosperity of market economies and suppresses any hope of actual meaningful salvation by instituting the false God of secular utopia and the extermination of actual religion from all human cultures? Are you aware that tyranny has been done to death in human history. And I’m not speaking metaphorically.
Clearly some minds consider the UN ‘like’ the church. I don’t believe that, and I don’t believe you believe that. Perhaps a multi-layered meaning of words tending to allusion and connotation is confusing to minds trained with empirical bent. I was speaking metaphorically, analogically.
Allow me, please: Bergoglio and his Vatican friends are only too happy to commune with UN folk and achieve sustainable development goals rather than communion with Christ, rather than sanctification and justification through the difficult sacrificial development of virtue. They apparently find it too backward and demeaning and historically passe to follow Christ and the Church Magisterium which precedes them. Bergoglio and Vatican friends are apparently not empirically minded enough to know that God will never fall or fail while they themselves may do exactly that. They may hope that hell is empty but Christ didn’t teach that.
How has tyranny been done to death? It seems that tyranny will not die so long as sinful men still live on earth.
Curious how close that is to the election…
Go for it Pope Francis!
We pray for your good health to be there!
I pray that he stays in his own diocese and attends to those matters. The Pope is a spiritual leader and not some earthly potentate.
Koekelberg, Belgium.
Hope Francis has time for a side trip to Antwerp for a little chat with Bonny on the small matter of euthanasia.
He should visit the EWTN chapel and find out he has been wrong about their mission.
In the minds of some, the UN is like the Church. How could Francis possibly deny himself communion with like-minded adherents of “peace and prosperity for people and the planet?” The seeker may even glimpse the glory of a specific type of salvation through sustainable development goals.
I wrote a prior somewhat angry response. Then it occurred to me that you might be sarcastic. If so, I apologize.
No problem. It is good to suffer a little ‘burn’ now and then.
Happy continuing Easter Season!
Well now, that would be interesting. I picture Cardinal Burke and Bishop Strickland outside… on their knees leading thousands of Catholics in a rosary for his conversion.
Maybe Biden will grant him a private audience.
They could do ice cream!
Stay home, Francis. The people who matter aren’t interested in anything you have to say at this point.
Oh boy,coming to see the Black sheep of the American Church??We English speaking Yankees aren’t His Holiness favorites!!! Maybe a slap down on another Trad Bishop will be in order.
If he comes, he comes. We can pray that he doesn’t, but that gets submitted to God’s will, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it… except welcome him with kindness, honesty, patience, and charity, and continue to pray for him.