Pope Benedict XVI’s Visit to the United States

This is a very important event for the people of the United States, in particular the Catholic community, and this recent forum features two prominent writers discussing what to expect from the visit.

Event Transcript
The Pope Comes to America
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Washington, D.C.

Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to the U.S. as pontiff comes amid a turbulent election year. He has planned stops at the White House, the U.N. and the Sept. 11 “Ground Zero” site. How should we assess the first three years of Pope Benedict’s papacy? How has the global role and influence of the papacy changed under this pope? How has the Vatican’s relationship with the U.S. Catholic Church changed over the years, and what is its current state? What are the political implications of this trip?

To discuss these issues, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life invited John Allen, Vatican correspondent at National Catholic Reporter and Vatican analyst for CNN and NPR, and George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow with expertise in Vatican issues at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Vatican analyst for NBC News.

Speakers:

John Allen, Vatican Correspondent, National Catholic Reporter

George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center

Moderator:

Luis Lugo, Director, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life

LUIS LUGO: Well, good afternoon to all of you, and thank you for joining us today. I’m Luis Lugo, the director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, which is a project of the Pew Research Center. The center is a nonpartisan organization and does not take positions on issues or policy debates.

This luncheon is part of an ongoing Forum series that brings together journalists and policy leaders to discuss timely topics at the intersection of religion and public affairs. I am pleased to welcome you today to a discussion on Pope Benedict XVI’s upcoming visit to the United States.

If the interest you folks have shown in this is any indication, then the pope’s visit is sure to attract considerable attention. Now in this roundtable, we want to discuss where things stand with Pope Benedict three years into his pontificate, as well of course as what his visit might mean for Catholics and other Americans. To help us explore these issues, we are delighted to have with us two very distinguished experts…

George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center here in Washington, D.C., in fact just a couple of blocks away, where he serves as the chair of the center’s Catholic Studies Project. George is also a Vatican analyst for NBC News and a regular contributor to Newsweek.

John Allen is a senior correspondent for National Catholic Reporter and a Vatican analyst for CNN and NPR. He is the author of Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith, about the future pope’s years as a cardinal…

JOHN ALLEN: I thought what I would do first is just give you a couple of basic facts and figures about the pope’s trip, which may be helpful for those transition graphs in the pieces you have to do, or the set-up comments on your broadcasts. Then I’d like to say a little bit something about what we might expect to hear from Benedict XVI when he is in the States. And then I’ll touch on a couple of questions that, in my experience of doing media about the pope, repeatedly surface, and I’ll try to engage those. One would be what we might expect to hear and not hear from the pope on the sex abuse crisis, and then also some comments about the pope and politics, looking ahead to the ’08 elections.

But, first, some just basic data. This is the ninth visit of a pope to the United States. The first was Paul VI on Oct. 4 of 1965. There were then seven visits by John Paul II, that is, assuming that you want to count two refueling stopovers in Alaska. But the Vatican counts them, and so I suppose we have to too. And then this of course is the first by Benedict XVI.

This trip actually will pull the United States into a tie with Poland for the most-visited country outside of Italy by popes in the modern era. It is also – and here is a bit of trivia that, if you’re blogging on this or if you have to do a box on, a kind of cover about the pope in America, this may be a good nugget – Benedict XVI will be the third pope to visit the United States, that is, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. But he will actually be the fourth pope to set foot onto American territory. And the way that works is this: In 1849, Pius IX was taking refuge in Naples because he had been kicked out of Rome by Garibaldi and the revolutionaries. And one bright spring day, King Ferdinand of Naples, who was his host, was invited to tour the USS Constitution, which happened to be anchored in a port near Naples.

Pius IX tagged along. It was actually a breech of protocol for the captain of the ship, a guy by the name of John Gwinn, to allow the pope on board because the United States was officially neutral on the contest between the pope and the Italian revolutionaries. The captain was actually submitted to a court martial for allowing Pius IX onto the ship, but he actually died of a cerebral hemorrhage before the trial could reach conclusion. One other footnote: Pius IX is reported to have become seasick while he was aboard the Constitution and actually had to take a nap in the captain’s quarters before he left. So the fourth pope to be in American airspace.

One other point is that there are only seven countries that have received at least five visits by popes in the modern era. The United States is the only one that is not a majority Catholic nation. I think that and the fact that it will now become, again, tied with Poland for the most-visited nation clearly is a recognition of the importance that the Holy See, the Vatican, attaches both to the political and cultural role of the United States on the global stage, and also to the importance of the Catholic Church in this country. Seventy million Catholics, representing one-quarter of the national population, the United States is the third-largest Catholic country in the world after Brazil and Mexico, and just ahead of the Philippines. So clearly, all of this suggests to us this is an important moment for the Vatican and for Benedict XVI.

Now just a couple of words about what we might expect. Typically speaking, when the pope travels, he has two audiences in mind. He has the audience of the country he is visiting – that is, the broad public, Catholic and not – and he would have sort of social, cultural, political messages for that broad audience. And then he will have something to say of course also to the Catholic community in that place, so a kind of insider Catholic message.

Now, on this trip, there are actually three audiences in mind because Benedict XVI is also addressing the United Nations on the morning of April 18, which means that in a sense he’s also talking to the whole world. And, by the way, this will be the fourth time a pope has spoken to the U.N. Paul VI did it in 1965. John Paul II did it in 1979 and again in ’95.

So just a quick word about each of these levels – first of all, his message to the world. I think in the U.N. address you will get the kind of standard checklist of Vatican diplomatic concerns, so things like peace in the Middle East, responsible transition in Iraq, concern for religious freedom around the world – the kind of standard, global concerns that we’ve come to expect when popes speak on global policy.

But I think the heart of his pitch before the U.N. probably will cut a little bit deeper. It will be Benedict’s argument that what the world desperately needs today is a global moral consensus – that is, a consensus on fundamental moral truths that are universal and unchanging that can serve as a basis for things like protection of human rights and human dignity. I think his analysis is that in an era in which you have several important players on the world stage – China and Iran come to mind – arguing that the whole concept of human rights is a sort of Western cultural artifact, I think the pope believes that the construction of a kind of moral consensus that we can all agree upon based on truths about human nature and open to the wisdom of spiritual traditions and religious traditions is a critical priority.

And I think that probably will be the heart of that speech.

In terms of his American message, again, this standard checklist of concerns I would expect. You will hear the Holy Father talk about the defense of human life, beginning with unborn life. I suspect there will be references to the defense of marriage based on union between a man and a woman. I think there will also be references to the Vatican’s concern about the ongoing carnage in Iraq and elsewhere, and the desire to see peace restored to Iraq and to other parts of the world.

Probably there will be at least veiled references to the Vatican’s desire to see the Holy See operate in a somewhat more multilateral fashion in its approach to global policy, foreign affairs.