WA****NGTON (AP) -- The leader of the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics
has been to the White House only once in history.
NAZI POPE who is barking at all others now come to see Bush whose
grand father Prescott Bush was the banker and stock broker for NAZIS
during the 30s and 40s. Bush family amassed wealth of many prominant
NAZIS when they vanished after the WW2.
Catholic Church call the Sri Lankan SUICIDE BOMBING TAMIL TERROISTS as
the DIVINE SOLDIERS OF CHRIST.
Now the CRIMINALS meet togetther, not to talk about peace but to talk
about the LOOTS.
American and Holy See flags fly during the pope's address Sunday at
St. Peter's Square in Vatican City.
That changes this week, and President Bush is pulling out all the
stops: driving out to a suburban military base to meet Pope Benedict
XVI's plane, bringing a giant audience to the South Lawn and hosting a
fancy East Room dinner.
These are all firsts.
Bush has never before given a visiting leader the honor of picking him
up at the air****t. In fact, no president has done so at Andrews Air
Force Base, the typical landing spot for modern leaders.
A crowd of up to 12,000 is due at the White House on Wednesday morning
for the pope's official, pomp-filled arrival ceremony. It will feature
the U.S. and Holy See anthems, a 21-gun salute, and the U.S. Army Old
Guard Fife and Drum Corps. Both men will make remarks before their
Oval Office meeting and a send-off for his popemobile down
Pennsylvania Avenue.
The White House crowd will be the largest of Bush's presidency. It
even beats the audience last spring for Queen Elizabeth II, which
numbered about 7,000.
The evening festivities will mark the first time the Bushes have put
on a high-profile meal in honor of someone who isn't even a guest.
Wednesday is the pontiff's 81st birthday, and the menu celebrates his
German heritage with Bavarian-style food.
But Benedict's prayer service that evening with U.S. bishops at a
famed Wa****ngton basilica preclude him from coming to the dinner,
according to the White House. Catholic leaders will be there instead.
The president explained the special treatment -- particularly the
air****t greeting.
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"One, he speaks for millions. Two, he doesn't come as a politician; he
comes as a man of faith," Bush told the EWTN Global Catholic Network
in an interview aired Friday. He added that he wanted to honor
Benedict's conviction that "there's right and wrong in life, that
moral relativism has a danger of undermining the capacity to have more
hopeful and free societies."
President Carter hosted the first White House by a pope. Pope John
Paul II was greeted at Andrews Air Force Base outside Wa****ngton by
Vice President Walter Mondale. His stay at the White House featured
10,000 guests -- split between separate arrival and departure
ceremonies on the North and South Lawns.
The Bush-Benedict get-together will be the 25th meeting between a pope
and a sitting president.
The first did not come until shortly after the end of World War I,
when Woodrow Wilson was received at the Vatican by Pope Benedict XV in
1919. The next wasn't for 40 more years, when President Eisenhower saw
Pope John XXIII in Rome.
Since then, such audiences have become a must-do. Every president has
met with the pope at least once, often more. This week makes Bush the
record-holder, with a total of five meetings with two popes.
There are more than 64 million reasons for this. Catholics number
nearly one-quarter of the U.S. population, making them a desirable
constituency for politicians to court. Watch an analyst discuss the
significance of the pope's visit =BB
"The pope represents not just the Catholic Church but the possibility
of moral argument in world affairs and it is very im****tant for
American presidents to rub up against that from time to time," said
George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and biographer of Pope John Paul
II.
The Vatican -- seat of a government as well as a religious
headquarters -- has an interest, too.
"It wants to be a player in world affairs, and everyone understands
that to do that you have to be in conversation with the United
States," said John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the
independent National Catholic Re****ter.
On social issues such as abortion, gay marriage and stem cell
research, Bush and Benedict have plenty of common ground.
But they disagree over the war in Iraq, just as Bush did with
Benedict's predecessor, John Paul.
When Benedict was a cardinal before the 2003 invasion, the now-pontiff
categorically dismissed the idea that a preventive strike against Iraq
could be justified under Catholic doctrine. In his Easter message last
year, Benedict said "nothing positive comes from Iraq."
Benedict told Bush at their first meeting last summer at the Vatican
that he was concerned about "the worrisome situation in Iraq." Bush
characterized the pontiff's concerns as mostly limited to the
treatment of the Christian minority in Muslim-majority Iraq. The
statement out of the Vatican suggested a broader discussion.
Weigel predicted talks this time would be focused almost entirely
there.
Prominent Christians have been slain in Iraq in recent weeks and tens
of thousands of Iraqi Christians are believed to have fled the country
because of attacks and threats. "The Vatican is a very adult place,"
he said. "The arguments of five years ago are over."
The current pope's approach may be softer than that of John Paul, who
turned from Bush's presentation to him of the Medal of Freedom in 2004
to read a statement about his "grave concern" over events in Iraq. But
Benedict is no less committed to the church's stand on issues such as
abortion, stem cells and the death penalty, as well as war.
In fact, the death penalty is another area of long-held disagreement,
with Bush a strong sup****ter. Benedict also speaks forcefully against
punitive immigration laws and the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, and
for environmental protection and social welfare -- all in ways that
often run counter to Bush administration policies.
But differences between popes and presidents are nothing new.
John Paul and former President Clinton clashed -- with strikingly
sharp Vatican statements -- on abortion.
Also, the church's opposition to almost any war but self-defensive
ones has been a persistent theme in U.S. relations.
Pope Paul VI wanted to help mediate an end to the Vietnam War. John
Paul also urged President Reagan against the arms race and spoke out
vigorously against the Persian Gulf war under the current president's
father. All these urgings, like the current anti-Iraq argument, were
to no avail.
"Modern popes have seen themselves as voices of conscience and
peacemakers," Allen said. "U.S. administrations haven't always been
excited for them to play that role."
Weighty discussions aside, the talks with Bush are not likely to be
the most-remembered or most influential part of the pontiff's six-day,
two-city U.S. tour, Weigel said. That is expected to come when
Benedict addresses the United Nations on Friday.
"I think it's nice they're going to meet. They have a lot of things to
talk about," he said. "But the notion that the world operates by the
big guys getting together and cutting a deal is wrong.
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