THE POPE AND PRESIDENT OBAMA
Obama wraps up first meeting
with Pope Benedict XVI at Vatican,
then heads to Ghana
VATICAN CITY, July 10 (AP) - President Barack Obama sat down with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on Friday for a meeting in which frank but constructive talks were expected between two men who agree on helping the poor but disagree on abortion and stem cell research.
"It's a great honor," Obama said as he greeted the pope, thanking him for this first meeting. They sat down at the pontiff's desk and exchanged pleasantries before reporters and photographers were ushered out of the ornate room.
The pope was heard asking about the Group of Eight summit, the meeting of developed nations that concluded before Obama's arrival at Vatican City. Obama said it "was very productive."
The pope and Obama met for half an hour, then were joined by first lady Michelle Obama.
Upon leaving, Obama again thanked the Pope. "We look forward to a very strong relationship between our two countries," he said.
There was no immediate word on what was discussed in the meeting.
With some Catholic activists and American bishops outspoken in their criticism of Obama, even as polls have shown he received a majority of Catholic votes, the audience was much awaited.
Obama is very popular in Italy and several hundred people lining the broad avenue leading to St. Peter's Square cheered his limousine as it went by. Obama waved. Awaiting him at the Vatican was an honor guard of Swiss Guards in their colorful, striped uniforms.
Now, let's see the spinmasters try to spin this! Nobody, but nobody, not even POTUS, gets a 'pass' from the Pope when it comes to standing for non-negotiable principles like the defense of life which are not amenable to dialog despite the best will in the world!
At their first meeting,
Pope Benedict XVI and Obama
agree on helping the poor;
disagree on abortion,
stem cell research
by Victor L. Simpson
VATICAN CITY, July 10 (AP)-- President Barack Obama sat down with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on Friday for frank but constructive talks between two men who agree on helping the poor but disagree on abortion and stem cell research.
"It's a great honor," Obama said as he greeted the Pope, thanking him for this first meeting, which lasted 30 minutes. They sat down at the pontiff's desk and exchanged pleasantries before reporters and photographers were ushered out of the ornate room.
The Pope was heard asking about the Group of Eight summit, the meeting of developed nations that concluded before Obama's arrival at Vatican City. Obama said it "was very productive."
After the meeting, the Vatican said the two leaders discussed immigration, the Middle East peace process and aid to developing nations. But the Vatican's statement also underscored the pair's deep disagreements on abortion.
"In the course of their cordial exchanges, the conversation turned first of all to questions which are in the interest of all and which constitute a great challenge ... such as the defense and promotion of life and the right to abide by one's conscience," the statement said.
Even in his gift to the U.S. leader, the Pope sought to communicate his beliefs.
Benedict gave Obama with a copy of a Vatican document on bioethics that hardened the church's opposition to using embryos for stem cell research, cloning and in-vitro fertilization.
(And that's our Pope Benedict, who always does what needs to be done and say what needs to be said - as he did with Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this year - to make clear where the Church stands.]
"Yes, this is what we had talked about," Obama said, telling the Pope he would read it on the flight to Ghana.
Earlier, the Pope's secretary, the Rev. Georg Ganswein, had told reporters the document would "help the president better understand the position of the Catholic Church."
[Imagine, even GG pushing the message for the Church!]
Upon leaving, Obama again thanked the Pope. "We look forward to a very strong relationship between our two countries," he said.
Obama met first with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, before meeting Benedict in the Pope's study.
Obama's wife, Michelle, joined him at the end of the meeting, and gifts were exchanged. Daughters Malia and Sasha, who accompanied their parents on the weeklong trip, also met Benedict. They were ushered out of the room before the media were allowed back in.
Several senior White House staff members also met the Pope, with some either shaking his hand or kissing his ring.
[The rest of the story is a repeat of the background that Simpson wrote about in his [preliminart story this morning - See post above this.]
THE VATICAN COMMUNIQUE
ON THE MEETING
Translated from
This afternoon, Friday, July 10, His Holiness Benedict XVI received in audience the President of the United States of America, His Excellency Mr. Barack Obama.
Before that, the President met His Eminance Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State, and Mons. Dominuque Mamberti, secretary for relations with other states.
During the cordial conversations, they dwelt first of all on questions that are of interest to everyone and which constitute the great challenge for the future of each nation and for the true progress of peoples, such as the defense and promotion of life and the right to conscientious objection.
They also focused on immigration, with particular attention to keeping famlies together.
Also central to the talks were issues of international politics, especially in the light of what took place at the G8 summit earlier this week. They dwelt on the prospects of peace in the Middle East, on which they had convergent views, and other regional situations.
They reviewed some topics of greaet relevance like the dialog among cultures and religions, the global economic-financial crisis and its ethical impllcations, food security, development aid to the poorer countries, especially to Africa and Latin America, and the problem of itnernational drug trafficiking.
Finally, they emphasized the importance of educating people of every nation in tolerance.
I think the AP account did not emphasize enough the second non-negotiable principle underscored by the Vatican communique: the right to conscientious objection, in this case by Cath9olic healthcare professionals who refuse to tkae part in abortion practices (including not selling contraceptives).
Note how the Vatican statement laid the stress, first and foremost, on these two non-negotiable princniples - even before going to questions like the Middle East, the world crisis and other international problems!
In his first report on the meeting, even cheerleader-in-chief John Allen does not attempt to spin what happened, except the usual "The Vatican went out of its way for Obama" - something the MSM chose to underplay when the Pope gave George W. Bush an unprecedented Vatican visit last June which was really 'going out of the way'!
Does anyone remember that - the reception and talk at Torre San Giovanni, the stroll through the Vatican Gardens, the musical program at the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes? At a time when Bush had six months left in his Presidency, the only ones to honor him as a person and as US President were the Pope and the African peoples whom his government had helped shubstantially in development aid and fighting malaia and AIDS.
Pope presses Obama
on pledge to reduce abortions;
Leaders find 'general agreement'
on Middle East, other issues
July 10, 2009
ROME - When President Barack Obama came calling on Pope Benedict XVI today, the two men enjoyed a “truly cordial” encounter, according to a Vatican spokesperson, but at the same time there was no diplomatic silence from the Pontiff about their differences over abortion and other “life issues.”
Not only did Benedict press his pro-life case with his words to the president, but he even found a way to make the point with his gift, offering the president a copy of a recent Vatican document on bioethics
[Dignitas Personae, acccording to the Italian media]]. According to a Vatican spokesperson, the pope drew a repetition from Obama of his vow to bring down the actual abortion rate.
Beyond the life issues, the Vatican’s statement indicated that Benedict and Obama also found “general agreement” on the Middle East peace process and other regional situations.
The two leaders also touched food security, development aid especially for Africa and Latin America, immigration and drug trafficking, according to the statement.
Coming away from the meeting, however,
it was hard to escape the impression that Benedict wanted to use it to deliver a clear pro-life message.
While Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, said after the meeting that it would be wrong to interpret the Pope’s message as a “polemic,” he added that the life issues are “important for the American Church” and “it would be ambiguous to try to hide these differences, or to put them in second place.”
According to a written statement from the Vatican, the first issues discussed during a 35-minute private meeting this afternoon in the Apostolic Palace were “questions which … constitute a great challenge for the future of every nation and for the true progress of peoples, such as the defense and promotion of human life and the right to abide by one’s conscience.”
The latter phrase was understood as a reference to the current debate in America over protections for health care workers who assert a conscientious objection to participating in abortions or other procedures.
During a session with Catholic journalists last week, Obama promised a “robust conscience clause” which would not weaken protections in vigor during the Bush administration.
In a briefing for reporters in Rome, Lombardi said that Benedict XVI said afterwards that Obama had seemed “attentive” to the Church’s concerns, and that Obama had reiterated his commitment to adopting policies that will bring down the actual number of abortions.
Lombardi said that Benedict XVI seemed “very satisfied and content” with how the meeting went. Obama left the meeting saying to the Pope that he wants to forge “a very strong relationship” with the Vatican.
The face-to-face session between Obama and Benedict XVI, accompanied by two interpreters, was scheduled to last around 15 minutes, but in the end the two men were behind closed doors for more than 35 minutes. Afterwards Obama introduced his family to the Pope, along with key members of his administration, and the two men exchanged gifts.
Typically that gift exchange is pro-forma, but this afternoon Benedict XVI used it to underscore his message on the life issues. In addition to a signed copy of his recent encyclical on the economy,
Caritas in Veritate, which has become the Pope’s standard offering to heads of state this week,
Benedict also gave Obama a copy of Dignitas Personae, an instruction from the Vatican’s doctrinal agency on bioethics released last December.
Dignitas Personae lays out the church’s position in defense of human life “from conception to natural death,” and also treats a wide range of new bioethical questions such as embryonic stem cell research, cloning, preimplantation diagnosis and genetic engineering.
As reporters waited outside during the private session, a top papal aide approached them to explain that the Pope was presenting Obama with a copy of
Dignitas Personae. He said, “The reading [of this document] could help the president better understand the church’s position.”
Later, as Benedict pointed the document out to him, Obama said it looked like he had “some reading to do on the plane.”
Prior to his session with Benedict XVI, Obama sat down with the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, for roughly 15 minutes.
Well before Obama even strolled into the Apostolic Palace, both sides had made clear they were committed to making this meeting happen.
Obama called on the Pope in the middle of what is arguably among the busiest days of his presidency to date. This morning he wrapped up a G8 summit in the Abruzzo region of Italy, meeting with the heads of state of African nations and then conducting a bilateral meeting with President Jacob Zuma of South Africa.
Obama then made his way to Rome to see the Pope, en route to the airport for a state visit to Ghana, where he’s due to arrive tonight.
On the Vatican side, two small but telling concessions reflect their eagerness to receive Obama. For one thing, it’s long been diplomatic protocol here that the Pope receives heads of state in the late morning, with the afternoon often reserved for meetings with curial officials.
For another, the normal procedure is for a head of state to meet first with the pope, in his library on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace, and then to descend to the first floor for a session with the Cardinal Secretary of State in his office.
In this case, Bertone came upstairs to meet Obama in a corner room, just a few doors down the hall from the papal apartment. In an inversion of the normal sequence, Obama met first with Bertone and then with Benedict XVI.
All these gestures were designed to accommodate Obama’s tight schedule, and although the concessions may seem small, in the carefully orchestrated world of Vatican diplomacy – where nothing is too insignificant to escape notice – they amounted to unmistakable signals that the Vatican wanted the chance to put some matters on Obama’s radar screen.
Despite the weighty nature of the issues at stake, some of the rock-star-like excitment that Obama often induces was evident even in and around the Vatican this afternoon.
In the Press Office of the Holy See, for example, a French correspondent displayed a banner above his work space, playing off the famous “Yes We Can!’ mantra of the Obama campaign.
The banner read: “Yes We Vatican!”
Perhaos the most sensible comment I read in the American press during the pre-meeting hooplah was from Father David O'Connell, rector of the Catholic University of America, who drily observed:
"People are making much more out of this than needs to be made. This is a standard meeting that the Holy Father gives a head of state, and I don't think it's going to be some great, earthshaking event. It's going to be a gracious and courteous time together."
As it seemed to be. The Pope looked very cheerful, Obama was beaming all the time, he and Mrs. Obama displayed a natural and easy deference to the Pope, the photos and videos are delightful.
It was, of course, not the standard meeting in the sense that the President of the United Sattes, whoever he is, is not your standard guest. In much the same way - perhaps more, even - that the Vicar of Christ on earth is not your standard host!
But there is also the historic fact that Obama is America's first black President, and whatever one may think of his policies (or his person, even), you can't take away that significant and historic distinction from him, and the fact that he had what it took [though not always right and proper] to win the Presidency after a mere handful of years in elected office.
It is in the mutual interest of both the Pope and the President to have had this opportunity to 'size each other up', to somehow get a sense of your interlocutor even after such a short get-together.
We should all be happy it went the way it did.
And, by the way, I continue to under-estimate the media capacity for spin. Consider this opening paragraph from an 'NCR Catholic' writing for NCR:
Benedict, Obama meeting
marked by clarity, respect:
Pope sets aside politics,
favoring education, persuasion
By Nicholas P. Cafardi
On abortion and some others topics, they evidently agreed to disagree, not in polemical anger, but in a clear understanding that such issues are difficult ones in a pluralistic society, in which well-meaning people, “exercising the right to abide by one’s own conscience,” in the words of the post-meeting Vatican press release, might have different moral solutions to the same problem. ...
[That's a blatant distortion right there of the context in which 'exercising the right to abide by one's own conscience' was meant in the Vatican communique!]
'They agreed to disagree' appears to be the Obama-rah-rah media's line on what took place at the Vatican today. Here's the spin from TIME:
Obama and the Pope:
Agreeing to disagree on "life" issues
By Jeff Israely
Vatican City Friday, Jul. 10, 2009 - Body language says a lot about a world leader's audience with the Pope.
During his 2007 visit to Pope Benedict XVI's private library, President George W. Bush sat down across the desk from the Pontiff as if he had just landed on his own porch in Crawford, Texas: leaning back in the velvet chair, legs crossed,
apparently eager to show his command of the situation.
[Isn't it more likely he was just being his usual self? I don;t think he ever, in eight years, gave the impression that he was 'eager to show he is in command' - he simply was in command when he had to - and meeting with the Pope was not one of those occasions. That meeting also came after Bush came back from a G8 summit in the Pope's homeland. I always had the impression Bush behaved with the Pope as he did did with his own father, who is two years older than Benedict, and with whom his children have a very warm and loving relationship that is evident whenever they are together or talk about each other.]
When President Barack Obama sat down in that same spot on Friday, July 10, for his first papal meeting, his posture was altogether different. Leaning forward from the front edge of the chair, his shoulders slightly hunched, his crossed hands resting softly on the edge of the Pope's desk, the leader of the free world looked more like a schoolboy who'd arrived to humbly plead his case to the principal.
[This, too, is a forced and false reading of Obama, who was full of confidenceas usual, though to his credit, he avoided the swagger, and seemed genuinely and naturally deferential all throughout what we were shown on TV.]
"You must be used to getting your picture taken," Obama commented to the Pope as a scrum of photographers clicked away, then continued, "I'm still getting used to it."
The potential for global symbolism abounds whenever an American President meets the Roman Pontiff, and the first-ever encounter between the 47-year-old Obama and the 82-year-old Benedict offered a vivid snapshot of how the change of the guard in Washington looks on the world stage.
Of course the differences are not just in the humble body language but in hard policy. To a large degree, the deck has flipped from the Bush era: the Obama Administration's focus on dialogue-centric, multilateral foreign policy is to the Vatican's liking, while its support of abortion rights and stem-cell research are a deep worry after the Pope's having had an ally on bioethics in the White House for eight years.
And during the oddly scheduled Friday afternoon meeting, crammed between the end of the Group of 8 meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, and Obama's departure for Ghana, the Pope had no intention of papering over differences on what the Vatican calls "life" issues, such as abortion and euthanasia.
While reporters and photographers waited in a narrow Vatican corridor outside the library during the private audience, the Pope's personal secretary, Monsignor Georg Ganswein, disclosed that there was one item added to the list of gifts for Obama:
Dignitas Personae ("The Dignity of a Person"), a Vatican document released in December that lays out its latest stance on biomedical ethics. "It can help the President better understand the position of the Catholic Church," said Ganswein.
When the Pope presented him with the light green softcover document after their 35-minute closed-door meeting, Obama quickly responded, "Yes, this is what we had talked about." And like that humble schoolboy, the President assured the Pope he would read it on the flight to Ghana.
Patrick Whelan, head of the Catholic Democrats organization in Boston, believes that the Pope's particular emphasis on bioethics may have been due to the recent uproar in the U.S. Catholic Church over the President's invitation to give the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame.
Some Catholic bishops opposed to the invitation because of Obama's stance on abortion and other ethical issues had hoped in vain that the Vatican would join the fray.
"There was a feeling that [
the Pope] didn't back them up over Notre Dame," said Whelan. "He wanted to show them that he wouldn't shy away from these issues in front of Obama."
[What an absurd supposition!It isn't for the Pope to 'back up' local bishops when they take a stand on local issues, and I am sure none of those 80 bishops expecetd the Pope to issue a statement saying "I think Notre Dame should not give the President an honorary degree"! Since when has any modern Pope descended to such detail in his governance of the Church? And the Pope has nothing to prove to the bishops, either.]
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told reporters after the audience that it was important for the Pope to be clear about the Church's stance on ethical issues.
"It would be ambiguous to hide or minimize what we believe," he said. "It's not meant to be divisive or polemical." Lombardi added that the Pope told him that Obama "explicitly expressed his commitment to reducing the numbers of abortions and to listen to the Church's concerns on moral issues."
Father Lombardi said the Pope seemed "extremely satisfied" with the meeting and was "well impressed" with Obama, who was "attentive and ready to listen."
White House officials said the President hand-delivered a letter to the Pope from Senator Edward Kennedy, who's suffering from an incurable brain tumor, and Obama asked for prayers for the brother of the only Catholic President in American history.
Benedict,
who doesn't have the same instincts in world diplomacy as Pope John Paul II and has had some notable verbal missteps,
[Israely just can't help planting this poisoned stiletto of his every chhance he gets!] has a new opportunity with a like-minded Obama Administration to have more of a say on a vast array of foreign policy challenges. [
DIM]8pt[=DIM][Really! How exactly does he have more of a say? On whatever issues they may think the same about, Obama's 'say' will always be considered the decisive 'say', with the Vatican simply part of the chorus. That's just the way things are in the world of itnernational politics.]
Among other issues touched upon was the West's relations with Islam, and the White House noted that they spoke about Obama's recent speech in Cairo directed at the Muslim world.
Still, beyond the private talk, Obama's visit to the Vatican — in which the President's wife and daughters also got a private tour of St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel — is one of the key encounters of his first year in office. It gives him the chance not only to solidify support from U.S. Catholic voters at home but also
to spread his new American gospel to the world [?????What new gospel? And how does association with the Vatican, however superficial it is because that's what it is for now, help him spread that 'gospel?
All those pro-abortion Catholics who voted for Obama will simply feel more hostile to the church and to the Pope for being so 'stubbornly old-fashioned in opposing abortion'! And Obama staunchly standing by his position that 'abortion is a fundamental human right' ain't going to solidify like-thinking Catholics behind him if his economic policies don't work!]
Once again, Mr. Israely, EEEEEWWWWWW!!!!!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/07/2009 04:56]