VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis will meet with homeless people, immigrants and prisoners during his coming trip to Cuba and the United States and will become the first pope to address the U.S. Congress.
He'll also preside over a meeting about religious liberty -- a major issue for U.S. bishops after the Supreme Court's gay marriage decision.
The Vatican published the itinerary Tuesday for the Sept. 19-28 visit.
Francis added the Cuba leg onto the start of his U.S. trip after helping contribute to the thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations.
In Cuba, he'll celebrate Mass in Revolution Square in Havana, as both of his immediate predecessors did during their trips to the Caribbean island nation. He also will travel to Holguin and pray before the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, the patron of Cuba, and meet with Cuban families in the eastern city of Santiago.
Francis arrives in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 22 and will be welcomed at the White House by President Barack Obama the next day. He will address Congress on Sept. 24, and will meet with homeless people later in the day at a local parish, St. Patrick's.
On Sept. 25, Francis will speak on sustainable development at the United Nations, where he'll have an opportunity to voice his concerns about the environment, which he addressed in his encyclical last month.
Republicans in the U.S. Congress, and even some Republican U.S. presidential candidates, have largely shrugged off Francis' denunciation of the current global economic system, in which he says wealthy countries exploit the poor and pollute the Earth in the process.
Nevertheless, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said lawmakers were welcoming the unprecedented papal address to Congress "with open ears and hearts."
Francis also will host an interfaith gathering at the site of the Sept., 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and will meet with children and immigrant families in Harlem.
Pope Paul VI in 1965, St. John Paul II in 1979 and Benedict XVI in 2008 celebrated Mass in Yankee Stadium in New York, but Francis will celebrate Mass for a smaller crowd in Madison Square Garden. He'll also preside over a vespers service at the newly spruced-up St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan.
On Sept. 26, he will join the church's World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, a big rally for the Catholic Church's traditional teaching on families. He will host a "meeting for religious liberty" on Independence Mall with immigrants and the Hispanic community, the Vatican itinerary said.
U.S. Catholic bishops have for years decried what they say are attacks on religious liberty, particularly over national health care laws that require insurance coverage for contraception.
The bishops' latest rallying cry has come since the Supreme Court decision declaring that same-sex marriage is legal nationwide.
While the decision does not compel any clergy -- Catholic or otherwise -- to marry gay couples, there are concerns that the large network of faith-based charities, hospitals and schools in the U.S., many of which accept some government funding, will be forced to recognize same-sex couples by providing benefits to same-sex spouses or placing adoptive children with gay couples.
While Francis has upheld church teaching that marriage is between a man and woman, he and the Vatican as a whole tend to consider religious liberty in more global terms, with Christians being slaughtered for their faith across the Middle East and parts of Africa by Islamic militants.
"I wouldn't be surprised if he reminded Americans that religious freedom issues in the United States are not the same as religious freedom issues around the globe," said Christopher Bellitto, an expert on church history at Kean University in New Jersey.
Francis also will visit prisoners at the Curran-Fromhold jail in Philadelphia before celebrating the final Mass of the family meeting Sept. 27, a celebration expected to draw some 1.5 million people in what is expected to be his largest gathering on U.S. soil.
Information for this article was contributed by Rachel Zoll of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/01/2015