Pope Francis used a speech in the birthplace of the United States to voice forceful words of support to the country’s immigrants, telling them not to be discouraged or ashamed of their traditions.
Speaking at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were adopted, the pope, in the final city of his US tour, addressed his comments to America’s large Hispanic population and recent immigrants to the US.
He made his remarks at a time when Republican presidential candidates are proposing sweeping anti-immigrant measures that are proving popular among voters who pick the party’s candidate in next year’s elections.
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“Many of you have emigrated to this country at great personal cost, but in the hope of building a new life,” the pope told a crowd of tens of thousands of people outside the historically significant site.
“Do not be discouraged by whatever challenges and hardships you face. I ask you not to forget that, like those who came here before you, you bring many gifts to your new nation. You should never be ashamed of your traditions.”
In another of his speeches on his five-day tour of the country that invoked the founding principles of the US, the Pope hailed immigrants for the contribution they have made and continue to make.
“Do not forget the lessons you learned from your elders, which are something you can bring to enrich the life of his American land,” he said. “I repeat: do not be ashamed of what is part of you, your life blood.”
He also addressed religious freedom, saying it was a fundamental right that “shapes the way we interact socially and personally with our neighbours whose religious views differ from our own.”
In a speech to the US Congress on Thursday, the pontiff appealed to US lawmakers to reject “a mindset of hostility” when it came to immigrants. On Saturday he spoke to the immigrants themselves.
Many in the audience waved flags from Mexico and Central American states. The pontiff, on the second-last day of his US visit, arrived onto the stage to the American anthem, Fanfare of the Common Man by Aaron Copland, fitting music for a man seen as a champion of the poor.
He said he greeted the immigrants in the crowd with “particular affection” as an immigrant raised in a foreign land.
Pope Francis had already referred on the trip to his own immigrant status as a son of Italian parents in his native Argentina and his pride at being in the US, a country largely built by immigrant families. At such a symbolically important site, the pope reminded the American audience of their history when it came to immigrants.
“We remember the great struggles, which led to the abolition of slavery, the extension of voting rights, the growth of the labour movement and the gradual effort to eliminate every kind of racism and prejudice directed at successive waves of new Americans,” he said.
Businessman Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner in presidential polls, has said he would deport the country’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, most of whom are Hispanic, and build a wall along the American border with Mexico.
He has said Mexico is sending rapists and other criminals across the border into the US. The City of Brotherly Land was flooded with pilgrims and police as tight security locked down the city behind rows of barricades and metal detectors.
Vendors peddled pope paraphernalia to the large crowds. Philadelphia was renamed “Popeadelphia” as Francis mania gripped the fifth largest city in the country, home to large Italian, Irish, Latino and African immigrant communities.
Last night at a ceremony emceed by actor Mark Wahlberg and which included performances by singer Aretha Franklin and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, the Pope spoke of the love of family. The pontiff is in Philadelphia this weekend to attend the World Meeting of Families, an event that has brought 20,000 to the city.
In off-the-cuff remarks at the evening ceremony, the pope called the family the “factory of hope” and said that whatever challenges may arise in families “only love is able to overcome.”
On Sunday, Pope Francis will visit the largest prison in Pennsylvania, Curran-Fromhold Correction Facility before saying Mass on Ben Franklin Parkway, one of Philadelphia’s main boulevards, before an expected crowd of more than one million people in the afternoon.
