Heeding Francis, Iowa Catholic leaders to pressure '16 field

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Roman Catholic leaders in the early voting state of Iowa will call Thursday on candidates for president to follow the teachings of Pope Francis and focus as much on the environment and income inequality in 2016 as they have in past elections on opposing gay marriage and abortion.

In that major teaching document, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics called for a "bold sweeping revolution" to correct what he sees as a "structurally perverse" economic system that allows the rich to exploit the poor and has turned the Earth into an "immense pile of filth."

The push from Pates and other bishops in Iowa threatens to disrupt the historically reliable alliance of evangelical Christians and conservative Roman Catholic voters, putting pressure on Republicans who have leaned on their religious faith to guide them on social issues.

Pope Francis hasn't changed church teaching, but he has given greater salience to social welfare and environmental issues, which has put Catholic Republicans in an awkward position," said John Green, director of the University of Akron's Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, "particularly if they want to also claim, like many of them do, that religion is important to them.

The GOP candidates vary marginally in their approach to the issues Francis addressed in the encyclical, in which he criticized deregulated free-market economics and argued that climate change was predominantly caused by humans.

Steve Scheffler, a Republican and leader in the state's evangelical Christian community, said Francis' writings may peel some Catholics away from the existing coalition of evangelical pastors and conservative priests united by their position on issues like abortion.