Pope’s US-Cuba visit to include meetings with homeless and prisoners

Staff reporter

Pope Francis will address a joint session of the US Congress, the first Pope to do so, on his much anticipated September 19-27 trip to Cuba and the United States and will meet Cuban president Raul Castro in Havana, the Vatican has confirmed.

His itinerary includes stops in Havana, where he meets Castro on September 20, Holguin and Santiago in Cuba before going to Washington DC, New York and Philadelphia.

He will meet with US President Barack Obama at the White House on September 23.

Under Francis, the first Pope from Latin America, the Vatican mediated last year’s resumption of diplomatic ties between Washington and Havana after more than half a century.

In New York, he will address the United Nations, participate in an inter religious service at the Ground Zero site of the September 11, 2001 terror attack on the World Trade Centre, and meet immigrants and their children at a school in Harlem.

He will spend the last two days of the trip in Philadelphia to close the World Meeting of Families, an international Catholic gathering that takes place in a different city every three years.

He will also visit the Curran-Fromhold prison.

Francis leaves on Sunday for Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay.