Tom Lane (left) walks across the tarmac outside of Executive Air at Yeager Airport Tuesday with Monsignor Edward Sadie and Sister Agatha Munyanyi on their way to Washington, D.C., to see Pope Francis. Sadie attended a welcoming ceremony for the pope at the White House on Wednesday.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A West Virginia state senator who attended a welcoming ceremony for Pope Francis at the White House said the atmosphere there was “electric” Wednesday morning during His Holiness’s visit.
“It was a very moving speech that he conveyed in English,” Sen. Jeff Kessler, D-Marshall, said after the ceremony. “He ended it with ‘God bless America,’ which I thought was interesting and very appropriate.”
Kessler was one of 11,000 people who attended the ceremony on the White House lawn.
Pope Francis spoke about the environment, climate change and immigration among other things.
Kessler, a Catholic, said the pope’s message of love and reaching out to immigrants and refugees was “spot on.” Kessler said the crowd included people of many nationalities and religions. Despite the heightened sense of security, the crowded moved smoothly, he said. Extra security procedures included patdowns, metal detectors and security personnel looking through the wallets of crowd members, he said.
Kessler said it was interesting to watch the pope pull up to the White House in a modest Fiat 500L.
“It was not at all ostentatious,” he said.
Monsignor Edward Sadie, the rector at Basilica of the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Charleston, came to the ceremony as a guest of Sen. Joe Manchin. Sadie arrived in D.C. Tuesday on a private plane flown by church member Tom Lane, an attorney and Charleston city councilman.
“It was a wonderful experience…
