Pope Francis has led the way in recent months in speaking out candidly about major social and political issues ranging from increased compassion for gay Catholics to warning of World War III to calling out Western powers for indirectly supporting extremist groups such as ISIS.
This time around, the political mouthpiece for the Vatican was the pope’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who urged his U.S. counterpart John Kerry to come up with an “adequate humanitarian solution” to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
During an hour-long meeting between the two men, Parolin pledged Vatican support to the United States to help facilitate a closure of Guantanamo.
Vatican spokesman Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi said Parolin and Kerry discussed “the commitment of the United States to close the Guantanamo prison and the desire for a favorable attention of the Holy See in search of adequate humanitarian solutions to the current detainees.”
In the past, Pope Francis has generally spoken out in favor of humanitarian treatment of prisoners and voiced his opposition to life prison sentences and the isolation of inmates.
President Barack Obama pledged to close Guantanamo during his first campaign in 2008. The maximum-security detention facility was established in 2002 by former President George W. Bush at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
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