UFW at White House for pope’s arrival, as pontiff touches on immigration and climate change
September 23, 2015 |07:08 PM
Pope Francis and President Barack Obama talk at the White House this morning. (White House)
United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez and Paul Chavez, president of the Cesar Chavez Foundation, were invited to join President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the arrival ceremony for Pope Francis at the White House today, the UFW said in a news release.
Chavez is the son of UFW founder Cesar Chavez.
“The UFW and Chavez Foundation fight for the rights of some of the poorest workers in America," the UFW said in a news release. "They produce the great bounty of food that feeds the U.S. and much of the world. Many of them are undocumented immigrants."
The invitation was the second Rodriguez has received from Obama in recent months. On Labor Day, he also accompanied Obama on the plane for a rally with other labor leaders there.
About 11,000 people were on the White House grounds, according to a press pool report.
In his speech, the pope touched on three issues of interest to agriculture: immigration, climate change and protecting the “vulnerable,” which could be interpreted as encouraging food aid and agricultural development.
“As the son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in this country, which was largely built by such families,” Francis said near the beginning of his speech.
Directly addressing Obama, the pope continued:
“I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution. Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation,” Francis said.
“When it comes to the care of our ‘common home,’ we are living at a critical moment of history.
“We still have time to make the changes needed to bring about a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change. Such change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition not only of the kind of world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them.
“Our common home has been part of this group of the excluded which cries out to heaven and which today powerfully strikes our homes, our cities and our societies. To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.
“I would like all men and women of good will in this great nation to support the efforts of the international community to protect the vulnerable in our world and to stimulate integral and inclusive models of development, so that our brothers and sisters everywhere may know the blessings of peace and prosperity which God wills for all his children.”
