Pope Francis Confirms 2015 Visit to United States
- Updated Nov 17, 2014
Pope Francis announced that he is coming to the United States. Francis said Monday that he will travel to Philadelphia in September for the World Meeting of Families, a conference that is held every three years.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, the conference's organizer personally invited him to the city in March.
President Barack Obama has also extended an invitation to the pope.
Vatican officials haven’t confirmed the details of his trip, but he is expected to visit New York and Washington.
The pope "wanted to guarantee his presence to the organizers of the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia 2015, but for the rest I have nothing to say, no concrete information to give," the Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters.
The pope also said this week that euthanasia is a sin against God and creation and a “false sense of compassion.”
“We’re living in a time of experimentation with life. But a bad experiment .. (we’re) playing with life,” he said from the Association of Italian Catholic Doctors in the Vatican.
The comments come just after Californian Brittany Maynard ended her own life because of a terminal brain cancer.
Publication date: November 17, 2014
