Vatican: Obama’s Small Bow To Pope Francis Eclipsed By Friendly Laughter, Serious Discussion
March 27, 2014- Obama arrived this morning at the Vatican’s ornate grounds
- After a slow procession he was introduced to Pope Francis
- Obama said that it was wonderful and a great honour to meet the Pontiff
- Their private discussion went over by nearly half hour
- Obama presented the Pope with a chest of fruit and vegetable seeds
- It is hoped the seeds will be planted in gardens of the papal residence
- Pope Francis has a 76 per cent approval rating in the U.S. according to poll
One is a world leader who has been praised for his humility and outlook on the world.
The other is an American president, once the international superstar of the political stage.
So it is no surprise that President Barack Obama has travelled to the Vatican in Rome possibly to get some tips from the popular Pope Francis who now even has own weekly glossy magazine.
As he sat down with the Pontiff in Vatican City this morning, Obama called himself a ‘great admirer’ of the pope.
Their historic first meeting comes as Obama’s administration and the church remain deeply split on issues of abortion and contraception.
Obama and Pope Francis Meet in Rome
March 27, 2014
By Carol E. Lee and Liam Moloney
The Wall Street Journal
VATICAN CITY—President Barack Obama arrived here Thursday for his first meeting with Pope Francis, a highly anticipated visit the White House hopes will gain support for its economic agenda but that is also likely to highlight divisions between the two on issues such as gay marriage and contraception.
Pope Francis greeted Mr. Obama with a handshake as they approached each other just outside the Papal Library, where they met for nearly an hour.
“Wonderful meeting you,” Mr. Obama said, thanking Pope Francis for receiving him.
The two walked into the Papal Library and took seats at opposite sides of the pope’s desk, along with their interpreters. “It is a great honor. I’m a great admirer,” Mr. Obama said, adding that he brought greetings from his family. “The last time I came here to meet your predecessor I was able to bring my wife and children.”
Mr. Obama arrived at the Vatican shortly after 10 a.m. local time. He stepped out of a black presidential sport-utility vehicle adorned with American and Vatican City flags on a chilly morning in San Damaso Courtyard at the papal residence. There he was greeted by Archbishop Georg Ganswein, the head of the papal residence, and shook hands with a line of Vatican officials before inspecting a cordon of Swiss Guards standing at attention in the courtyard.
The president and the pope were expected to discuss their mutual interest in addressing income inequality, as well as immigration. While Mr. Obama and Pope Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had a cool relationship, the White House is hoping for better chemistry between the president and the first pope from the developing world. Mr. Obama has tried to highlight the similarities in his policy agenda and Pope Francis’ strong anti-poverty message, even quoting the pontiff in his speech on economic inequality.
But sharp differences remain between the White House and The Vatican on abortion, gay marriage and contraception. In a statement released before Mr. Obama’s visit, the Vatican made pointed reference to the “complex phase” of the current relationship between Mr. Obama and the Catholic Church.
The statement highlighted concerns about the administration’s health-care law and emphasized the differences between the pontiff and the president. While Pope Francis has called for less emphasis on such issues by the church’s leadership, he has nonetheless strongly reaffirmed church doctrine opposing birth control, abortion and same-sex marriage.
Pope Francis exchanges gifts with U.S. President Barack Obama, wearing a suit, during a private audience at the Vatican on Thursday. Reuters
The White House played down divisions between Mr. Obama’s policies and the Catholic Church ahead of the visit. Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser at the White House, said the meeting would be an opportunity for the president and the pope “to get to know each other personally” and discuss areas of mutual interest.
In an interview published Thursday with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Mr. Obama said he expected income inequality to be one of the main topics they discussed and that he hoped to share with the pope his policy efforts on the issue.
The lift a nod from the pope could give Mr. Obama’s agenda wasn’t lost on the president, who has struggled to get his policies through Congress. “And as we’ve seen repeatedly, his words matter,” Mr. Obama said in the interview. “With a single sentence, he can focus global attention on an urgent issue.”
He added: “It doesn’t mean we agree on every issue, but his voice is one that I think the world needs to hear.”
A small group of American Hispanics outside St. Peter’s Square during Mr. Obama’s visit with Pope Francis were asking for reforms to U.S. immigration policy.
“First of all we ask for the U.S. authorities to stop the deportation of those held without proper documentation,” Rev. Marco Mercado told reporters.
Mr. Obama recently said his administration is reviewing its deportation policy, which has come under sharp criticism from the president’s supporters.
Mr. Obama was joined Thursday by Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and other senior administration officials.
The president arrived in Italy Wednesday night. The stop is part of a six-day trip that has taken him to the Netherlands and Belgium, where he held a series of discussions with European leaders on the crisis in Ukraine.
Mr. Obama’s visit to Italy will also be closely watched for comments on issues such as Ukraine, which has dominated his time in Europe this week. The White House issued a statement Thursday welcoming the announcement from the International Monetary Fund that it reached a deal to provide $14 billion to $18 billion aid package to Ukraine.
The issue is likely to arise during Mr. Obama’s meetings with Italian leaders. He is scheduled to meet with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and the country’s new prime minister, Matteo Renzi. In the interview published Thursday, Mr. Obama said one of his highest priorities is finishing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which has met resistance from U.S. lawmakers in his own Democratic Party. The trade pact, Mr. Obama said, would be “a win-win for Europe and America, and I believe we can get it done.
But the president’s stop in Italy—which will also include a tour of the Coliseum—is primarily about meeting the pope.
Mr. Renzi, who will hold a news conference with Mr. Obama around 3:30 p.m. local time, attended Pope Francis’ daily 7 a.m. Mass at a Vatican chapel, along with about 500 parliamentarians and other members of his government.
In his homily, the pope warned against leaders “distancing themselves from the people” and “closing themselves within their own internal power struggles.” Mr. Renzi took power just last month after ousting his predecessor, Enrico Letta, who had been in power for just 10 months.
After Rome, Mr. Obama will fly to Saudi Arabia Friday for a meeting with King Abdullah, before returning to Washington on Saturday.
Write to Carol E. Lee at carol.lee@wsj.com and Liam Moloney at liam.moloney@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
Mr. Obama and Pope Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had a cool relationship. An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the previous pontiff as Benedict XIV.
Mr. Obama and Pope Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had a cool relationship. An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the previous pontiff as Benedict XIV.
Report from CNN contains video:
Obama Seeks Common Ground With Pope Francis
March 27, 2014
By and
The New York Times
VATICAN CITY — They are an unlikely pair with seemingly much in common: an Argentine pope and an American president who each burst onto the global scene as a history-making change agent, each promising to promote a new post-partisan ethos, each having made the cover of Rolling Stone.
But when President Obama and Pope Francis meet on Thursday, the question is whether the common arcs of their political biographies also amount to true political common ground.
Having spent the first leg of his European tour consumed by the Ukraine crisis, Mr. Obama arrives at the Vatican hoping to change the subject to income inequality and America’s struggling middle class, a topic in which his aides see similarities to the antipoverty economic themes embraced by the pope in his first year.
Francis’s plain-spoken and humble style has quickly made him one of the world’s most recognizable and popular figures — so popular that the pope recently criticized his own celebrity status. White House aides see significant political upsides in the meeting at a time when the president is hoping his economic initiatives, such as a push to raise the minimum wage, will minimize losses in midterm elections this fall.
Yet the meeting also bears risks for the president: Francis’s economic message, if still not fully defined, has focused on the abject poor, not the middle class. As the first pope from the developing world, Francis has expressed a more biting skepticism about the impact of American-style capitalism than any American president ever could.
And even as Francis has sought to steer the Roman Catholic Church away from the culture wars, he is still expected to raise the strong opposition by American bishops to provisions in the Affordable Care Act that require most employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception. A senior Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity, predicted a smooth and successful meeting but noted that Francis “will be well prepared on Obamacare.”
Popes and presidents have been meeting since President Woodrow Wilson came to the Vatican in 1919. President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II made common cause against communism, but often what resonates are the gestures and the personal chemistry between the two men — or the lack of it.
When Mr. Obama met Pope Benedict XVI in July 2009, the meeting was described as very cordial, with broad discussions over foreign policy. Yet the tone-setting gesture was a gift from Benedict to the president: a copy of a Vatican book on bioethics that condemned embryonic stem cell research and abortion rights. The president, who supports both issues, joked that it would provide him with reading material for his outbound flight.
“I don’t expect Francis will be handing out books,” said John Thavis, a longtime Vatican analyst and author of “The Vatican Diaries.”
He said differences on abortion and the Affordable Care Act would most likely arise in the private conversation between the two men, but predicted that the agenda would focus more on issues of shared concern like inequality, human trafficking, food security and conflict-torn regions in the Middle East and Africa.
“Everyone knows they disagree about this issue already,” Mr. Thavis said. “It isn’t a surprise. The meeting will remind people that there are issues that go beyond the health care and contraception issues.”
Changing the tone of the papacy has been central to Francis’s first year, and his distaste for the confrontational emphasis on issues like abortion and homosexuality has given hope to some Democrats that the political emphasis of the hierarchy of the American church might also gradually shift. But Francis has been more critical and outspoken than most establishment Democrats, repeatedly addressing the plight of the global poor, condemning the “idolatry of money” and warning about unchecked capitalism.
“Pope Francis is challenging the capitalist system to deal with the common good,” said Sister Simone Campbell, the executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby founded by nuns.
“While President Obama talked about the need to build up the middle class, I don’t see any politician here changing the economic structures.”
Even so, White House aides welcome the pope’s broader anti-poverty message at a time when Mr. Obama has been talking about income inequality in the United States. They say the president is eager to discuss these issues with the pope.
“He has very much admired the leadership he has provided in his first year as pope, his commitment to address issues like income inequality, and his leadership of the church more broadly,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser.
After a brief public appearance at the Vatican, the pope and the president will meet privately on Thursday morning, and analysts expect the agenda will closely follow talks held in January between Secretary of State John Kerry, himself a Roman Catholic, and his Vatican counterpart, Secretary of State Pietro Parolin.
In that meeting, Archbishop Parolin raised the Affordable Care Act, but the bulk of the time was spent discussing Syria, the Middle East, South Sudan, religious freedom and global poverty.
Last September, as the Obama administration was contemplating military strikes against Syria, Francis condemned any escalation of the violence and held a prayer vigil for peace in St. Peter’s Square.
Mr. Obama ultimately turned away from military action, and while it is difficult to gauge the pope’s influence, if any, the moment signaled that Francis, like other popes, intends to press his agenda on global peace and also on the persecution of Christians in countries that prevent freedom of worship.
“Popes have been dealing with world leaders since the time of Charlemagne,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor-at-large of America, the national Catholic magazine. “This is part of their role.”
Father Martin also noted that for all the political and social issues likely to be discussed between the pope and the president, he expected that one “overlooked” topic would also be on the agenda: Christianity.
“This is a meeting between two Christians who take their faiths seriously, and who are both public Christian intellectuals,” he said. “I would imagine that some of the meeting would probably focus on the Gospel.”
Prominent U.S. Catholic Cardinal Blasts Obama as a ‘Totally Secularized Man’ Who Is ‘Hostile Toward Christian Civilization’
March 27, 2014
By Billy Hallowell
The Blaze
U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, overseer of the Vatican’s highest court, recently accused President Barack Obama of impeding Christians’ religious liberties, charging that he “promotes anti-life and anti-family policies.”
Burke, who serves as the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, said during an interview with Polonia Christiana Magazine that Obama’s policies have been increasingly unfriendly toward Christians.
“It is true that the policies of the president of the United States have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization,” Burke said. “He appears to be a totally secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life and anti-family policies.”
Burke’s comments came after the interviewer proclaimed that Obama’s policy toward “the Christian civilization
The Blaze
U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, overseer of the Vatican’s highest court, recently accused President Barack Obama of impeding Christians’ religious liberties, charging that he “promotes anti-life and anti-family policies.”
Burke, who serves as the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, said during an interview with Polonia Christiana Magazine that Obama’s policies have been increasingly unfriendly toward Christians.
“It is true that the policies of the president of the United States have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization,” Burke said. “He appears to be a totally secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life and anti-family policies.”
Burke’s comments came after the interviewer proclaimed that Obama’s policy toward “the Christian civilization
No comments:
Post a Comment