Upon his official welcome at the White House, Pope Francis highlighted three public-policy priorities. The dominant themes of Francis’ pastoral program — encounter with God, mercy and mission — were left for later. At the White House, Francis only obliquely mentioned God, but he spoke to America’s political class.

The three priorities he chose were two that are dear to the American bishops — immigration and religious liberty. Those two have dominated the bishops’ public-policy advocacy in recent years. The third was dear to the Pope himself: the need for global regulation to fight climate change.  

We can expect that the Holy Father will return to those themes in his address to Congress on Thursday morning. As a friendly foreign observer, I might suggest three other themes the Holy Father might raise in the U.S. Capitol, issues which set the United States apart from the rest of the world.

First, I hope Pope Francis addresses the utterly unique status of America’s abortion license. Widespread late-term abortions do not take place in other Western democracies. The Planned Parenthood videos could not have been shot in other democracies, simply because late-term abortions do not take place there on a widespread enough basis for the harvesting of fetal organs. The commercialization of obscenity is also another American speciality, as the pornography industry demonstrates. Francis thus might seek to rouse the consciences of those who, like the members of Congress before him and the vice president behind him, continue to support Planned Parenthood, a wicked combination of two things the Holy Father regularly denounces: abortion and the primacy of profit.

Second, the Pope, who inveighs against the “throwaway culture,” should raise another uniquely American phenomenon, the degradation of the criminal-justice system, which locks up millions and throws away the key. Both commentators on the left and the right are acknowledging that the right to a fair trial no longer exists in America. Over 90% of convictions never go to trial, with largely poor and middle-class defendants pressured into plea bargains for which they do not have adequate counsel. No one knows how many thousands of innocent people are in jail. The public-defender system is hopelessly inadequate. The rise of arbitrary and overlong sentences means that the United States incarcerates far more people per capita than any other democracy, and even more than most dictatorships.

American prisons, despite being built to super-sized proportions, in both liberal states like California and conservative states like Texas, simply do not have the capacity to house the vast numbers the prosecutorial state continually stuffs into them. It is a national scandal about which very few speak. The Pope of the voiceless should raise his voice about America’s national shame.

A third subject that Francis could persuasively speak about is debt. America is the most indebted nation in history; so indebted that it often finances its debt by writing IOUs from one department of government to another. Personal debts are also high, with college education now becoming an introduction for many Americans to a lifetime of high debt levels.

Pope Francis speaks often about intergenerational solidarity; a culture of debt is built on intergenerational theft. Pope Francis lives an admirable simplicity of life; a culture of debt fuels a life of indulgence. Pope Francis knows the Argentinian experience of how high levels of indebtedness bring decades of economic decline; a culture of debt puts the poor and vulnerable at greatest risk when economic collapse comes.

America is, as many Americans will tell the Holy Father in the days ahead, a unique and often exceptional country. It is just that, for good and also for ill. Pope Francis at Congress is well-placed to offer a patriotic prayer for America the beautiful: God mend thy every flaw!

Father Raymond J. de Souza is the editor in chief of Convivium magazine.

He was the Register’s Rome correspondent from 1998 to 2003.