How to host Pope Francis: Obama learns from Bush

Sep 22, 2015

WASHINGTON D.C.: When Pope Francis makes his first visit to Washington, this week, President Obama will do something he has rarely done in his six years in office: He’ll follow George W. Bush’s example.

Obama will take the unusual step of welcoming Francis in person at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, greeting the head of the Catholic Church as he disembarks from the chartered aircraft that brings him to the United States after the first leg of his North American tour, a stop in Cuba.

Other world leaders don’t get that kind of reception.

But “we felt like this was customary,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz recently told reporters, noting that Bush had set a “precedent” in April 2008 by making the brief but symbolic trek to the facility to see former Pope Benedict XVI arrive.

The diplomatic do’s and don’ts of White House protocol have evolved over more than two centuries of foreign dignitaries coming through Washington. But papal meetings with American presidents come with a special set of rules and expectations built up over a relatively short time.

“It’s unique in that this person is dual-hatted — head of state and head of the Catholic Church and its 1.2 billion believers,” Jim Nicholson, Bush’s ambassador to the Vatican from 2001-2005, explained to Yahoo News. “He does not have an army but has great influence on the strength of what I call his ‘moral megaphone.’”

 Francis will be making just the third visit by a pope to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, after St. John Paul II in 1979 and Benedict XVI nearly two decades later. He will also become the first to address a joint meeting of Congress, where more than 160 members describe themselves as Catholic. Republican House Speaker John Boehner, a lifelong Catholic, said in a recent video released by his office that the previous two popes turned down his invitation to speak.

“They probably thought that it was probably too political a venue for them to appear at. And it is the legislative arm of government — not all heads of state go there,” Nicholson said.

But “this Holy Father seems to be comfortable taking any forum, any podium, any platform, any pulpit,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Archbishop of Washington, told reporters this month.

A new relationship

Francis will be just the fourth pope to visit the United States, a reflection of the fact that, despite their global influence, the head of the Catholic Church and the president of the United States have a relatively recent history.

The very first summit between a reigning pope and a sitting U.S. president was less than 100 years ago, in 1919, when Woodrow Wilson visited Benedict XV at the Vatican during the president’s triumphant European tour following the end of World War I.

Prior to that meeting, a combination of Protestant domination in the United States, anti-Catholic sentiment, questions about who really led the Catholic Church and the difficulties of travel had kept presidents and popes apart. Lingering anti-Catholicism and an uncertain relationship with the Holy See (the two only established formal diplomatic ties in 1984) would allow another 40 years to elapse before another such sit-down.

In 1959, Dwight Eisenhower met with Pope John XXIII at Vatican City, and that audience set a trend: Since then, every U.S. chief executive has met at least once with the reigning pontiff.

Ike’s 1959 meeting had its lighter moments. Reporters entered the room to find Eisenhower, John XXIII, and some of their closest aides “roaring with laughter,” according to Gen. Vernon Walters, a U.S. military adviser.

The Italian-born pope had just observed that he had mastered Bulgarian, French and Turkish but struggled with the language of Shakespeare. “The more I study English, the more I realize that papal infallibility does not cover pronunciation,” the religious leader joked.

Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, is still the only Catholic to have occupied the White House. He spent much of the 1960 presidential race dogged by anti-Catholic allegations that he would take his orders from the Vatican and consequently kept some distance from Rome after his election. But in 1963, just a few months before his assassination, Kennedy journeyed to the Vatican to meet with Pope Paul VI.

Two years later, Paul VI became the first pope to set foot on U.S. soil with a brief trip to New York during the United Nations General Assembly. But it wasn’t until 1979 — practically yesterday in historical terms — that a pope called on the White House.

In October of 1979, Pope John Paul II traveled to the United States on just the third international trip of his papacy — and he made it count, stopping in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Des Moines and Washington. His visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue ran nearly three and a half hours and was a packed schedule, chronicled in then-president Jimmy Carter’s detailed daily diary. There were private one-on-one talks with Carter as well as meetings with lawmakers and governors who came to the presidential mansion for the occasion. The pope also made some time to see the Georgia Democrat’s wife, mother, kids and a friend of his son Chip. There was an hourlong reception as well. But most observers felt that the highlight of the pope’s visit to Washington was an open-air mass on the National Mall that he celebrated for an estimated 175,000 people.

Dressing up for the pope

John Paul II traveled to the United States six more times over the length of his papacy. And if he is [CS3] the most well-traveled pope, then George W. Bush holds the presidential record for the most papal meetings: He sat down for six conversations with two popes over his eight years in office.

For Benedict’s 2008 White House visit, Bush pulled out all the stops. Nicholson remembers that first lady Laura Bush “had the flowers around the Rose Garden and the South Portico replanted — yellow and white,” the colors of the Vatican flag.

It was Benedict’s birthday, so the president, the first lady and other notables welcomed him with a surprise rendition of “Happy Birthday.” And “there was a birthday cake by the White House pastry chef,” Nicholson said.

 But if that pageantry set a precedent for Obama’s upcoming meeting with Pope Francis, Bush’s meetings with popes also gave future presidents at least one “don’t.”

The State Department’s Office of Protocol has already taken steps to ensure that no one in the U.S. government commits the same faux pas Bush made at the Vatican in June 2007, when he called Pope Benedict XVI “sir” instead of “Your Holiness.”

“That guidance has been sent out governmentwide to those who ask,” a State Department official told Yahoo News. “It will be ‘Your Holiness.’ And when greeting the Pope, you can shake hands or, for Catholics, you can kiss the Pope’s ring, which is worn on his right hand.”

The office has also let government workers know that “dress should be modest and respectful — both men and women in dark colors, clothes that cover knees and elbows, hems below the knee,” the officials said. “It’s not mandatory, but it’s the guidance.”

(The official said that the pope is not the only visiting dignitary for whom the protocol office recommends more modest attire. It’s true for at least one leader from a Muslim country, according to the official, who declined to be more specific.)

Francis’ incredible global popularity means authorities in Washington expect tens of thousands of people to throng the National Mall for a chance to see him pass in his open-air popemobile, watch his speech to Congress on special Jumbotron TVs outside the Capitol, and catch a glimpse of the pontiff when he and Boehner make a brief joint appearance on the Speaker’s Balcony that faces the Washington Monument.

When Francis arrives at the White House, Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will welcome him on the South Lawn, where a crowd of around 15,000 specially screened well-wishers is expected to wait for hours for a glimpse of the pope. There will be a 21-gun salute followed by a band playing the anthems of the Vatican and the United States.

The president and the pope are expected to head into the residential section of the White House and reappear on the Truman balcony, which overlooks the South Lawn. The two leaders will exchange gifts in private, then head into the Oval Office for a private meeting.

Francis may chafe a little at the pomp and circumstance. After all, this is a pope who famously shuns the trappings of wealth and privilege, opting to live in a simple flat instead of the apostolic palace at the Vatican and carrying his own luggage. (The pope cares so deeply about projecting an everyman image that when aides once placed his briefcase on the airplane before he boarded, Francis reportedly made them remove it so he could carry it on himself.)

The humility is not just for show, the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Kenneth Hackett, told Yahoo News in a telephone interview from Rome. “He walks the walk. He drives the Ford Focus,” said Hackett. “There’s no Gucci shoes there.”

Hackett said the pope has many policy concerns on his mind, including the humanitarian crisis in Syria and the flood of refugees fleeing the bloody violence there. The Iran nuclear deal, Obama’s opening to Cuba, stalled Middle East peace efforts, and “the fate of Christians and other minorities persecuted around the world” will also be on the agenda in the Oval Office.

The Obama administration has also leaned on Francis’ call for action on climate change to pressure Republicans and cited his criticisms of global greed as an obstacle to lifting more people out of poverty. Francis is expected to use a visit to a prison near Philadelphia to reprise his criticisms of excessive incarceration and renew calls for criminal justice reform — a subject dear to Obama.

But that’s not to say that their priorities overlap perfectly. Like all modern popes, Francis has sharply condemned abortion. And it’s unclear whether Francis will say anything about American military operations around the globe under Obama, though he has been critical in the past.

“We don’t agree with every detail of foreign policy or every detail of domestic policy,” said Hackett. “You focus on issues where you agree, try to work through the issues where you disagree.”

That was the case when Bush met with John Paul II, who offered withering criticism of the war in Iraq and opposed the death penalty. Asked recently what happens when a president and a pope disagree, Wuerl laughed. “This is one of the reasons why those meetings are always private,” he replied.

Boehner, in the video produced by his office, highlighted Francis’ calls for outreach to the poor and greater religious faith. When it comes to disagreements, the speaker made clear that the excitement of a papal visit to Washington trumps the cynicism of partisan conflict.

“He’s got some other positions that, you know, have been more controversial,” the speaker said. “But it’s the pope!”--AP