Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

From the WashTimes…now that I can post things again (!):

Wuerl paves own path
By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 17, 2007

Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl.  J.M. EDDINS JR. (THE WASHINGTON TIMES)
———————————————————— ——————–
Almost a year into his job as the spiritual leader of the Washington area’s 560,000 Catholics, Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl has set a personal agenda and style that are worlds apart from those of his more flamboyant predecessor.
Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, now retired, was known for his extroverted persona, hobnobbing with politicians and worldwide travels. His successor prefers to stay closer to home.
“I am not making the politics of the country my focus,” Archbishop Wuerl said in an interview with The Washington Times. “My focus is pastoral and spiritual as bishop.”
However, he hasn’t ruled out political involvement. In April, the archbishop met with an unspecified number of Catholic House Democrats at the D.C. home of Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut for what she called “an opportunity to get to know one another.”
“He has a wonderful style and focus on teaching. He has a willingness to listen and a pastoral approach. He appears to be a consensus builder,” Mrs. DeLauro said.
Asked about the nature of the discussion, she said: “We talked about everything but not about specific issues. People wanted the opportunity to talk about why they are serving [in Congress] and who they are.”
Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said he has had several “conversations” with Archbishop Wuerl. The archbishop was a deacon at the wedding of his wife, Teresa, and her first husband, John Heinz, in February 1966.
“He’s a very thoughtful, very intelligent, strong representative of the church,” Mr. Kerry, also a Catholic, said this month. “He’s doing a terrific job. I’ve talked to him a couple of times [this year] and have had wonderful conversations with him.”
Archbishop Wuerl’s studious, precise and understated manner is a change of pace from Cardinal McCarrick’s frequent press conferences and de facto role as spokesman for American Catholic bishops. In January 2001, the cardinal had barely arrived at his Washington chancery from his previous post as archbishop of Newark, N.J., when he hosted two special dinner guests: the newly elected President Bush and his wife, Laura.
The cardinal left office a year ago, and Archbishop Wuerl was installed as the leader of Washington’s Catholics on June 22.
“I had no sooner gotten here than they invited me to the White House,” Archbishop Wuerl said.
“It was an extraordinary evening,” he said, adding that the meal in Mr. Bush’s private quarters was partly an occasion to bid farewell to Cardinal McCarrick and partly to greet him as the new archbishop and welcome Archbishop Pietro Sambi as the new papal nuncio to the United States.

Archbishop Wuerl has since been back to the White House to talk about urban Catholic schools, but the rest of his first year here has been spent comparatively under wraps, traveling the 2,104 square miles that comprise the Archdiocese of Washington.
So far, he has visited half of the archdiocese’s 140 parishes. His duties have ranged from dedicating a new Catholic high school in Olney and celebrating the Vietnamese New Year at Our Lady of Vietnam in Silver Spring to ordaining five priests last month at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
“We’ve been trying to get to know this local church, which means getting around to it,” Archbishop Wuerl said. “That’s been a joy. It’s also been a challenge. It’s a big archdiocese territorially.”
David Gibson, an observer of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy and author of several books — including “The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle With the Modern World,” released last year — said the archbishop was fortunate to have a year of adjustment before the 2008 presidential election.
“He is not a headline-grabber and he hasn’t been through a presidential campaign,” Mr. Gibson said. “Now he will be. As much as he’d like to keep a low profile and be a pastor, all those things are going to press in on him.”
Lawmakers and Communion
Archbishop Wuerl’s primary focus has been to establish himself as a teacher — much like his boss, Pope Benedict XVI, now into his third year of what religious observers and journalists have called a “teaching pontificate.”
The archbishop said he goes to Capitol Hill occasionally to meet with “a number of people on both sides of the aisle” for “conversations” to help people “form a conscience.” Just recently, he added, someone called to ask him about conscientious objection.
“The whole idea was, ‘Bishop, can you help me understand what the church’s take on this is?’ ” Archbishop Wuerl said of the dialogue with the lawmaker, whose name he did not disclose.
“I think that is one of the things a bishop can do that helps his flock: to try to help people understand the distinction between political actions and the moral import of those actions,” he said.
The archbishop’s relationships with lawmakers have generated some controversy, particularly on Jan. 3, when House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi attended Mass at Trinity University in the District. Her presence set off protests from Catholics who believe that canon law plainly bars pro-choice Catholic lawmakers from receiving Communion. A week later, the archbishop told a reporter in San Diego that he had no plans to bar Mrs. Pelosi from receiving Communion in his diocese.
“He created great scandal in the archdiocese for choosing not to deny Nancy Pelosi Holy Communion,” said Judie Brown, president of the American Life League. “She persistently draws attention to her Catholic identity and her public support for abortion. He had a tremendous opportunity to set the record straight while publicly instructing her. What kind of teacher is that?”
In 2004, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — wrote a letter to U.S. Catholic bishops saying they must try to convince pro-choice Catholic legislators that their stance is wrong. If the lawmakers did not change their minds, the letter said, they should be barred from receiving Communion.
Archbishop Wuerl declined to say whether he would ever take such a step.
“My primary responsibility is to teach and therefore to help every Catholic inform their conscience,” he said. “When people do things contrary to church teaching, my responsibility is to help them understand that is wrong. Sometimes that takes a lot of conversation. Sometimes you’re not successful at it.
“The next step — after lots and lots of conversation — is that if a person is acting out in a way that contravenes their faith, you ask them, ‘Do you think you should be receiving Communion?’ and even to say to them, ‘If you really do need to examine your conscience and if you can’t bring yourself to what the church calls a coherent position, don’t you think you should refrain from Communion?’
“I think that’s what the pope is talking about,” Archbishop Wuerl said.
Is there a time when teaching stops and discipline starts?
“I think there will always be a time you say, ‘For the good of the church, you are now presenting a public scandal,’ but you have to remember this person has a bishop and he has to be involved in this discussion as well. I think discipline is always the last step,” he said.
But isn’t it his right to say who receives Communion within the archdiocese?
“I don’t think it is uniquely any one bishop’s job to oversee all the politicians in the United States,” Archbishop Wuerl said. “Every Catholic member of government has a pastor and a bishop and they need to be in dialogue with them. The idea that the archbishop of Washington is somehow bishop for the nation is not acceptable.”
Inside the Wuerl pool
Catholic blogger Rocco Palmo says the archdiocese’s Hyattsville chancery has been nicknamed the “Wuerl machine” for the archbishop’s meticulous and driven work ethic.
“The hard-charging administrative style — schedule divvied up into 10-minute blocks, detailed command of figures large and small, lots of homework for aides and [bishop] — both inspire confidence and credibility,” Mr. Palmo wrote in November on his Web site, whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com.
Within three days of the papal announcement on May 16, 2006, that Archbishop Wuerl was named to the Washington see, his senior staff members were asked to come up with job descriptions and lists of their accomplishments and goals.
The archbishop’s schedule’s been so packed since coming here, he has had to forgo his habit of swimming laps, except for an occasional foray into the Catholic University pool.
“He’s a hard worker 24/7,” said the Very Rev. David O’Connell, president of Catholic University and a 20-year friend of the archbishop. “On Saturday, I was working in the garden and I got a phone call from the archbishop. I was wearing a T-shirt,” but the archbishop, he noted, was at his office. The two men talked about business for an hour on a day that most clergy take off.
“He’s not a micromanager, in my experience of him,” Father O’Connell added. “He’s got carefully honed administrative skills. He’s had those positions all his life, so he’s had a long time to develop those skills. He’s got a great sense of humor. He’s a bishop’s bishop, he really is.”
The education archbishop
According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 50 percent of the 475 men who will be ordained as priests this year in the United States attended a Catholic elementary school.
This is one reason why Archbishop Wuerl has spent much of his first year trying to overhaul the archdiocese’s inner-city school system. Soon after he arrived in Washington, the archbishop called in his catechists and said he wanted to hold a workshop for the archdiocese’s religious educators. On Oct. 5, 2,300 people attended the archdiocese’s first catechetical convocation to set a vision for religious education.
“We had to get everyone on the page with the same information,” Archbishop Wuerl said. “Here are the number of students we have, here’s what it costs, here is where the deficits are, here is where our potential for addressing some of those deficits lie. And … how to guarantee Catholic education in the future for the diocese and how can we guarantee we won’t outprice it.”
One of his concerns is that the Center City Consortium, a corporation created to fund eight inner-city schools, has run out of money.
“In the past 10 years, we have spent nearly $60 million,” the archbishop said, “but the number of schools has gone from eight to 14. That has overtaxed the sources. The board is working to see how we can keep as much Catholic education in the [inner-city] as possible while also being able to pay for it.”
It’s not that the archbishop is lax on fundraising.
His annual archbishop’s appeal is far ahead on donations, having raised $11.3 million in pledges, about $3 million more than it had at the same time last year. This year’s goal was $11.1 million.
Monsignor Ronald Jameson, rector of St. Matthew’s Cathedral downtown, said his parish pledged 114 percent of its goal for the appeal.
“I am very impressed with him,” Monsignor Jameson said of the archbishop. “He is so organized. He spends a lot of time in preparation for ceremonies [at the cathedral] to make sure everyone is on the same page.”
In the confessional
Perhaps the archbishop’s biggest success was his first pastoral letter on the sacrament of confession, released near the beginning of Lent.
Called “The Light is on for You,” it evolved into a press campaign with 100,000 brochures in English and Spanish, a Web site (www.thelightison.org), ads on the Metro system, one billboard in Prince George’s County and radio ads.
“It was an extremely successful effort,” Archbishop Wuerl said. “A large number of priests have said to me, ‘Some of the confessions I heard in one day made the whole thing worth it.’ “
Other pastors reported having to reorder brochures and hearing confessions of Catholics who had not taken part in the sacrament for several decades.
The Catholic Church requires its members to go to confession at least once a year, but a 1980 University of Notre Dame survey — the most recent one available — showed that one out of four Catholics never go. The archdiocese received inquiries from several other dioceses and press requests from overseas about the pastoral letter.
The success of the penance campaign raised questions at the chancery about what else can be done to reach the region’s many Catholics.
“We’ve had some meetings on how to get my voice out as pastor,” Archbishop Wuerl said. “We found out those ‘Light is on for You’ radio pieces got responses from thousands of people. I’d like to get into that whole world of popular communications.”
So when does he intend to begin a blog? The 66-year-old archbishop acknowledged that this technology is beyond him.
“Down the road I’d like to,” he said. “But you have to use sound bites and be brief and repetitious. Many of us were trained and formed in literature, philosophy, theology — the very disciplines that don’t train you to release everything into sound bites. So you have to reprogram your way of speaking.”

From the Anchoress:

http://theanchoressonline.com/2007/06/26/a-family-in-crisis- and-in-need-of-prayers/

n Wednesday afternoon the Secretary of State, Tarcisio Card. Bertone gave the Motu Proprio to 30 bishops from around the world on Wednesday afternoon in the Apostolic Palace.  The bishops were explicitly chosen and invited for this.  (I am guessing that they were heads of Bishops Conferences.)  Pope Benedict XVI later came to the meeting.   The document is three pages long, though what the format is in not revealed.  The Pope’s accompanying letter is four pages.

It is clear from the way this was done that the Holy Father wanted to make sure that bishops got this document in this way, rather than having to read about it in the paper.  I assume that what will happen now is that these bishops, if they are heads of conferences, will return home and distribute the document to the bishop members of the conference.

[UPDATE: They are not only heads of conferences: H.E. Archbp. Raymond Burke of St. Louis and H.E. Sean Card. O’Malley of Boston was there, whether because of this meeting or a coincidental meeting is not clear.]

The general publication is 7 July.   Review the FIVE RULES.

I can even hear my own illustrious typing–huzzah!!
OK so we went to Dr. W’s and first he checked the site to make sure everything was kosher…we were good to go. Beth says there’s still a tiny bit of swelling but that’s OK. Apparently roller coasters are kind of a no-go unless I take off the CI and secure it with someone else, but I think I can handle that (not all my friends are coaster riders). So anyway, I go back to see him in 3 months just to make sure everything is OK.

Then I saw Beth. First we checked all the electrodes (22) to make sure they worked, which they did (yay!). Then we did the first map which was threshold markers; basically soft and loud sounds. It’s pretty crude, but whatever. So I had to indicate whenever I heard the random beeping in my ear. Now this can take a while to master, but eventually we got it done. Once we had this first map (which took awhile since there were 22 channels to check out), Beth activated the thing and let me try to understand speech with it. At first I heard Beth’s voice and a lot of what sounded like radio static. Then her voice sort of merged with the static and I got this cartoony kind of thing, but it didn’t really matter, because I knew what the heck she was saying. And I didn’t have to slavishly follow her lips and guesstimate!! Huzzah! At first it’s still sort of hard for me to understand you but the more you talk to me the more I get used to you. And everyone’s voices sort of sound the same (Mickey/Minnie) in the beginning, until I get used to your sound. But the point is, even if it’s sort of crude, I can freakin’ hear you! Mom and I actually had like real conversation in the car on the way home which DID NOT happen before. Cars were actually the worst because I couldn’t look at the person’s lips and there was road noise to contend with. But I could hear all of her “father from a Christmas Story” comments on the other drivers. Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing (kidding mom). So anyway, keep talking to me so I can get used to you!
I went home and practiced the music which went really well. My singing is already a lot better even though sometimes I get static in my ear. But I can hear the pitches again and that rocks my world! I have choir pracgice tomorrow night so we’ll see how it really goes. But Beth said it will just keep getting better b/c the brain is so adaptable. I know mine is.
Had a Parish Council meeting here tonight which was GREAT! I actually got everything! Well, almost everything. Not totally everything. But that’s OK. So I am looking forward to work tomorrow to see what happens. I warned my boss that they might all sound liek Mickey. But who cares? This is awesome!
I really don’t want to take it off. Is that weird???

This is one of those books I bought a few summers ago (yes, I know!) that I just now got around to reading! I enjoy books that deal with the topic of Catholics in America, and I thought this would be a good primer.

I was sort of right and sort of wrong. The book is really basic–if you’re a Catholic, lapsed, practicing, whatever, you will find some of the author’s explanations of every single Catholic thing really boring. You will also, if you are more devout, find it annoying that he sort of fudges the point on things, like talking about redemptive suffering as if it was a past idea and putting “consecration” in quotes when talking about the Eucharist.

The book traces the arrival of Catholics in America from the Spanish conquistadors and missionaries up until the 1990s. I didn’t read the last chapter because by that point I was sort of bored with the book. It touches on a lot of points but it’s so basic that unless you have no ideas on this topic, it’s not really worth reading. Also, it skims over some places and doesn’t give adequate attention to major figures of the faith in America, like St. Elizabeth Seton, and gives too much credence to publications like America.  

So all in all, not a real winner, but at least I can cross if off my list of things to read. Hopefully I can find a better book on this same topic in the future.

A take on them from Fr. Z:

We must all challenge ourselves to make each and every document of the Holy See our own, in some way appropriate to our vocations.

You have, I am sure, been deeply moved and edified by the new roadie document from the Card. Martino’s office.

To help you get your start in making the roadie doc your own, here are some suggestions from the Curt Jester.

Be serious, now.

The following are some of the highlights of the new document.

• If you are carjacked one mile, go with him two.
• If yor are hit, turn the other signal.
• Do not let your air bag become puffed up like the Pharisees
• Let not the sun go down on you road rage
• Carry your cross daily, or at least have one hanging from your rear view mirror.
• When you enter a freeway that is backed up, go and move to the lowest place and not try to merge into the front. For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
• Do not talk about your Honda so that it can be said of you “That he did not say it of his own Accord.”
• Hydroplaning is not the same thing as walking on water, avoid it.
• Before Jesus performed the miracle at Cana, he appointed a designated driver.
• Do not say “Are we there yet”, but rather “It is good to be here.”

ME: But of course, as everyone knows, there are 15 commandments. Moses just dropped 5 on the way down from Sinai. (If you don’t get this, you need to rent History of the World Part 1. And I do mean NEED to.)

Just a few:

–first, for the friend of mine I mentioned a few posts ago, and his family. It is much appreciated.

–for me, as I apply for a job at Children’s Hospital in their Marketing/Communciations Department. I really feel that I would be a great asset to them, since I’m sort of walking, talking advertisement for the place anyway… and it’s more pay, which is nice.

–for my pastor as he prepares to leave for St. Agatha’s, and for our new pastor.

–for the band director at my sister’s high school; he’s abut 30 (or younger), with a wife and a baby boy, and was just diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer. They are in TX pursuing treatment.

Apparently FireFox is hating me and not allowing me to cut and paste things onto my blogs! So I’m just going to have to tell you fun things I’ve read:

–The WaPo had an article on my cousin, Archbishop Wuerl, and his first year “in office.” If I can ever get this to cut, I’ll post it here, but you can probably find it on the site’s archieves.

–Fr.Z had a great list of five things to do when the M.P. comes out; check out the link of the sidebar to see it. And it IS coming, we swear! Really!

–Note that the MP just allows priests to celebrate the old Latin Mass without getting a bishop’s approval. The old  Mass has always been allowed to be said but you had to get the OK. (if I am wrong about this let me know!)
–In  local news…preparations are underway for my pastor’s Last Mass with us on July 8th at noon. The choir will be singing, and since I will have my CI activated by then, I will join them! YAY! And we are singing some of our best stuff, so it you’re an SPX parishioner be sure to come on out!

–Parish festival prep already! I signed up to work the food booth. Doesn’t everyone love the parish festival?

–Started Evelyn Waugh’s (a man, yes, not a woman, thank you) quintessential Catholic novel, Brideshead Revisted. Very, very good thus far.

–Finished Suffering of Love and Honey from the Rock. Both extremely good.

–Oh, and the ECUSA has a bishop who is both Episcopalian and MUSLIM. You can read about this on Rod’s blog (Crunchy Cons) on the sidebar.  When headlines from The Onion are coming true, that’s got to be a “sign of the apocalypse” (S.I.)

From Amy today:

No Amnesty
Consequences for Amnesty International’s move to abortion support:

Abortion has driven a wedge between the Catholic Church and an organization that began as an ally.

Amnesty International (AI) was founded in 1961 by Peter Benenson, a British convert to Catholicism. But today, as a result of Amnesty International’s recent decision to promote abortion rights, Church leaders say that Catholics should withdraw all financial support from the London-based human-rights organization.

“I believe that, if in fact Amnesty International persists in this course of action, individuals and Catholic organizations must withdraw their support, because, in deciding to promote abortion rights, AI has betrayed its mission,” Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said in an e-mail interview.

The abortion policy has already cost Amnesty International the support of one long-time Catholic backer: Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan.

Said Father Berrigan, “One cannot support an organization financially or even individually that is contravening something very serious in our ethic.”

Such a reaction from a human rights activist doesn’t surprise Cardinal Martino. Amnesty International “has betrayed all of its faithful supporters throughout the years,” he said, “both individuals and organizations, who have trusted AI for its integral mission of promoting and protecting human rights.”

snip

Father Berrigan said he first became acquainted with Amnesty’s work in the 1960s, when the newly formed group launched a campaign on behalf of Archbishop Josef Beran of Prague, who was imprisoned by Czechoslovakia’s Communist government after he spoke out against government abuses.

“I was very moved with the international activity on behalf of powerless people,” Father Berrigan said. And, he added, no one is more powerless than unborn children in the womb who are at risk of being killed by abortion.

Father Berrigan emphatically agreed with Cardinal Martino’s statement that individual Catholics and Catholic organizations should withdraw all support for Amnesty International if it doesn’t reverse its decision to advocate for abortion rights.

“I’ve supported over the years Amnesty’s take on prisoners of conscience around the world, and have been a member of Amnesty,” he said. “And I was quite shaken by this change.”

Much more in the article, including statements from an AI senior staffer and Austin Ruse of  the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute

From USA Today: (and it quotes my cousin!!)

  Bush awarded Pope John Paul II the Medal of Freedom. The president will meet Pope Benedict XVI for the first time Saturday.

Benedict, Bush both benefit from meeting

USA TODAY/GALLUP POLL

How much attention should President Bush pay to Pope Benedict XVI’s ideas and pronouncements about policy?

Moderate amount: 46%

Not much: 21%

A great deal: 18%

None at all: 11%

No opinion: 4%

Source: USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken June 1-3 of 496 adults nationwide. Margin of error +/-5 percentage points.

By David Jackson, USA TODAY
ROSTOCK, Germany — When Al Smith lost the 1928 presidential race, he was attacked for being Roman Catholic and therefore too close to the pope.
Today, U.S. presidents and the leader of the Catholic Church enjoy a working relationship that has spanned decades.

President Bush had his fourth papal audience on Saturday and his first with Pope Benedict XVI. Bush will tie a meeting record set by presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, who both met four times with Pope John Paul II.

Bush told a group of European journalists last week that he was looking forward to meeting with Benedict, calling him a “a good thinker and a smart man. I’ll be in a listening mode.

“Sometimes I’m not poetic enough to describe what it’s like to be in the presence of the Holy Father,” Bush said. “It is a moving experience.”

Americans generally like the idea of presidents conferring with popes. About seven in 10 say Bush should pay more attention or the same amount to Benedict as he does to other world leaders, according to a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. Only 27% say the pope should receive less attention.

While American political history includes a thread of anti-Catholicism, church observers and political analysts say the meetings between the president and the pontiff offer something for both.

The president represents “the one great superpower and all that signifies,” said Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. “The pope speaks from a worldwide perspective of faith, spirituality and conscience.”

Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said “a sense of approval from the Vatican” can only help a president on the international stage. Closer to home, he said, the White House “has seen good relations with the Vatican as part of (its) domestic effort to woo Catholic voters, particularly conservative Catholic voters.”

Bush won 52% of the Catholic vote in 2004, according to media exit polls, and beat Sen. John Kerry, who is Catholic.

Bush’s meeting with Benedict touched on the Iraq war, which the Vatican has long opposed. John Paul dispatched a cardinal to the White House in 2003 to plead against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and echoed his opposition to the war when he met with Bush in 2004. John Paul also opposed the Persian Gulf War.

The president’s other meetings with John Paul touched on politically sensitive issues such as embryonic stem cell research and charges of clergy sex abuse.

In his Easter message this year, Benedict bemoaned that “nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees.”

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, D.C., said, “War and peace are always on the mind of the Holy Father.”

Benedict, who became pope in April 2005, has had his share of controversy. His suggestion of a link between violence and Islam in September 2006 sparked a protest throughout the Muslim world, though Benedict sought to clarify his remarks on a visit to Turkey a few months later.

And while traveling to Brazil earlier this year, Benedict said politicians risked excommunication if they supported abortion laws.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, said the meeting between Bush and the pontiff was a “photo op.” Still, he said, it “allows for an exchange of information and views” on a wide range of issues.

“The Vatican has been called one of the great listening posts of diplomacy,” Reese said. “Let’s hope the administration listens.”

Some historical facts about presidents and popes, according to the Rev. James Garneau, who lectured on the topic at Catholic University:

•Woodrow Wilson was the first president to meet with a pope, Benedict XV in 1919. A president did not have a papal audience again until 1959, when John XXIII received Dwight Eisenhower. That began a tradition that has included every president since.

•John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic elected to the White House, ignored anti-Catholic sentiment to visit Pope Paul VI in 1963. They discussed the civil rights movement.

•Reagan, who nodded off during his first meeting with John Paul II, formed an anti-communist pact with the pontiff whose native Poland was temporarily behind the Iron Curtain.

July 23, 2001 at Castel Gandolfo, the papal retreat Stem cell research The pope asked Bush not to support federal funding of research on embryonic stem cells. The meeting occurred months before Bush approved limited federal support of such research using existing stem cell lines. Bush vowed Thursday he’ll veto a research bill passed by Congress because it would destroy human embryos. He vetoed the measure once before, in 2006.  “Experience is already showing how a tragic coarsening of conscience accompanies the assault on innocent human life in the womb.” —Pope John Paul II One example he cited: “Proposals for the creation for research purposes of human embryos, destined to destruction in the process.”

May 28, 2002 at the Vatican Clergy sexual abuse of children Bush was in Rome for a NATO conference. At the time, several priests in the USA were under investigation for molesting children. Church leaders were accused of covering up the problem. Bush and the pope met privately, and there were no statements afterward — the only time that happened in their encounters. “I will tell him that I am concerned about the Catholic Church in America. I am concerned about its standing, and I say that because the Catholic Church is an incredibly important institution in our country.” —President Bush, before the meeting

June 4, 2004 at the Vatican  The Iraq war  On his way to a 60th anniversary commemoration of the Normandy landings, Bush visited the pope to give him a U.S. Medal of Freedom. The pope and the Vatican were outspoken against the war in Iraq and violence in the Middle East. Later that year, Bush won a second term, even though the Iraq war brought down his approval ratings.  “Mr. President, your visit to Rome takes place at a moment of great concern for the continuing situation of grave unrest in the Middle East, both in Iraq and in the Holy Land. You are very familiar with the unequivocal position of the Holy See in this regard.” —Pope John Paul II