During his first visit to the United States, Pope Francis extended his solidarity to a group of Catholic nuns who are currently involved in a legal battle over the health care reform law, birth control coverage, and the bounds of religious liberty.
On Wednesday, the pope made an unscheduled visit to the convent of Little Sisters of the Poor, the Colorado-based nuns who filed a complaint against Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate in 2013. According to the Vatican’s spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the pope’s visit was meant to show “a sign of support for them.”
The Little Sisters of the Poor object to the provision in the health law that requires employers to offer birth control to their workers at no additional cost. The Obama administration has since issued a religious accommodation to that particular provision — allowing employers to submit a form informing the government of their religious objection to birth control, which triggers a workaround so the insurance company directly foots the bill. But the nuns say that filling out that form still violates their religious beliefs.
In July, a federal appeals court ruled against the Little Sisters, concluding that the current accommodation “does not substantially burden their religious exercise.” The Colorado nuns are now hoping to take their case to the Supreme Court.
In his first U.S. address on Wednesday morning, which was mainly focused on climate change, the pope gave a public nod to these ongoing fights over religious accommodations in the wake of health care reform. In the first several paragraphs of his prepared remarks, Francis implored the U.S. government to consider the beliefs of American Catholics and “respect their deepest concerns and their right to religious liberty.”
Though Pope Francis has taken somewhat of a softer tone on contentious “culture war” topics like abortion and same-sex relationships — suggesting that Catholics should be less “obsessed” with those issues — he hasn’t done much to change the Catholic Church’s overall approach to issues of reproductive rights. Rather unexpectedly, considering his position atop the Catholic hierarchy, he has remained steadfast in his opposition to hormonal contraception and condemnation of abortion, referring to women’s choice to end a pregnancy as an “agonizing and painful decision.”
Most lay Catholics don’t share this position. Recent global polls have found that the majority of Catholics actually support abortion rights, and more than 80 percent of U.S. Catholics specifically say that birth control is morally acceptable. In some parts of the world, these evolving attitudes toward women’s health issues are leading to policy changes.
During the Holy Father’s visit to the United States, several outlets have been quick to point out that Francis, as a religious figure, doesn’t fit into our traditional political categories of “Democrat” or “Republican” or “left” or “right.” Issues of reproductive health are a good example of that. Francis’ theology arguably isn’t radical, and though he spends much more time emphasizing social justice issues than culture war issues — which is exactly why his papacy has galvanized left-leaning Catholics across the globe — he still takes pretty much the same stance on reproductive rights as you’d expect.