As Pope Francis gets into high gear on his visit to the United States, it’s worth reviewing details and contexts in the extraordinary message to Catholics and the rest of the planet in “On Care for Our Common Home,” the encyclical he issued earlier this year.

The core message lies in a simple phrase in the poem he included: “The poor and the Earth are crying out.”

[Today at the White House, Francis pressed the case for action on climate change (via The Times):

“Mr. President,” Francis said in his first major speech in English, carefully enunciating each word in his Spanish accent, “I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution. Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation. When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history.”

Devoting more of his address to that issue than to any other topic, the pope said there was still time to heal the planet for its children. “To use a telling phrase of the Rev. Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it,” he said.]

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