pope and oreos

Marie Mosca
Opinion Editor

Over the past few weeks there was a lot of hype about Pope Francis  visiting the United States. Although I do not plan to talk about every stop he made or every person he was able to meet while he was here, I did want to go over a few of what I considered to be the “highlights” of his visit. The Pope visit lasted from Sept. 19 to Sept. 27. It was Pope Francis’ first ever visit to the United States. The Pope was greeted at the tarmac by none other than President Barack Obama, as well as his family and many other guests. There was then a formal welcoming speech given at the White House in Washington. The pope briefly spoke on the topic of refugees and immigrants during his welcome at the white house stating “As the son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in this country, which was largely built by such families”.
The Holy Father met with a gay couple as well as Kim Davis who has been denying marriage licenses to gay couples lately. The visit with Kim Davis was said to not be viewed as a form of support for what she has been doing. Although the Catholic church is not accepting of gay marriages, the Pope does stress that acceptance and love be shown to gay couples and not be hateful or discriminatory in any other ways.
Possibly some of my favorite of Pope Francis’ “Shenanigans” involve him skipping lunch with lawmakers after addressing congress to eat with 300 homeless Washington residents, his delight in our wide variety of Oreos and the magic trick he decided to perform at the United States meeting of Bishops by pulling the cloth out from underneath some things during a ceremony of sorts which you can find here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYjeWGH8Z1c. I would say he looked extremely proud of himself for that last one. I would dub this first visit to our country a success and say that he is welcome back any time he wishes.