House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday invited Pope Francis to address a joint session of Congress — an unprecedented event — during an expected visit to the United States next year.
Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have quickly sought to invoke the popular pontiff’s devotion to the poor.
Francis, who on Thursday marked the first anniversary of his election as the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, is widely expected to travel to Philadelphia in September 2015 to attend the World Meeting of Families.
Mayors of several other U.S. cities have invited him to visit and Boehner moved to secure a spot on the pope’s itinerary in a letter to sent to the pontiff on Thursday.
“It is with reverence and admiration that I have invited Pope Francis, as head of state of the Holy See and the first pope to hail from the Americas, to address a joint meeting of the United States Congress,” Boehner said in a statement.
While Pope John Paul II visited Washington in 1979 and Pope Benedict XVI visited the U.S. capital in 2008, the U.S. Senate Historian’s office said it has no record of a pontiff ever addressing Congress, Telegraph informs.
