Let women be priests, Sen. Kaine tells the pope

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, a practicing Catholic and former missionary, had a clear message Wednesday for Pope Francis: Allow women to become priests.

Kaine said ending the church's centuries-old rule that only men can be ordained would be the most significant thing the pope could do.

"If women are not accorded equal place in the leadership of the Catholic Church and the other great world religions, they will always be treated as inferiors in earthly matters as well," Kaine said in a statement. "There is nothing this Pope could do that would improve the world as much as putting the Church on a path to ordain women."

Kaine, like most members of Congress, will be in the Capitol this morning to hear Pope Francis' address to a joint session.

"What we need to hear from the Pope is how leaders of all kinds - political, business, religious, military, etc. - should turn away from excesses of self-advancement and embrace the servant role that Pope Francis exemplifies so clearly," Kaine said.

"What I hope to hear from the Pope is an opening for the universal church to finally and fully embrace Galatians 3:28 - 'There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female; all are one in Jesus Christ.' "

The Virginia Democrat has a personal connection to the Jesuits, a Roman Catholic order of priests and brothers that includes Pope Francis.

Kaine went to a Jesuit high school in Kansas City, Mo. While at Harvard Law School in the early 1980s, he took a year off to run a technical school in Honduras founded by Jesuit missionaries. He returned fluent in Spanish and graduated from Harvard in 1983.