Trumka: Pope Francis's US visit may boost alliance between labor, Church

[UrbScotty]

It’s easy to make the country’s most powerful labor leader go almost schoolkid giddy. Just say, “Pope Francis.”

Richard Trumka breaks into a smile that would light up a mine shaft. “Just talking about him makes my heart swell up,” says the president of the AFL-CIO, whose office overlooks the White House. “It makes me feel good because it’s like hope. He’s given people hope who have been without hope for so long.”

The alliance between labor and religion, particularly the Catholic church, is nothing new. From the promulgation of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 to Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium, popes have written and spoken in uncompromising terms when making the case for the rights of workers to organize, to advance and protect their own interests, to be justly compensated, and to have humane and safe working conditions.

The alliance had grown frayed in recent decades, but of late, the two sides have shown signs of reconnecting and finding new possibilities for working together. A year ago, Trumka attended a workshop, “Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism,” organized by The Catholic University of America’s Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies. He introduced Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and chairman of the pope’s Council of Cardinals. The respondent to the Rodriguez address was then Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, Wash., since appointed archbishop of Chicago.

http://ncronline.org/news/people/labor-leader-francis-us-visit-may-boost-alliance-between-unions-church