President Bush will be on hand this afternoon at Andrews Air Force Base to roll out the red carpet for Pope Benedict XVI, whose six-day visit to Washington and New York likely will be among the most significant journeys of his papacy.
Anytime the leader of the world’s Roman Catholics arrives on these shores, of course, is a joyous and momentous event for all Americans.
The trip, Bush explained, honors the pope’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.”
For Benedict – only the third pontiff in history to visit this country – it will be an opportunity to cement his personal ties with America’s 65 million Catholics, still reeling from the effects of the sex-abuse scandal that so profoundly shook the US church.
In fact, the pope plans to address that issue directly and “in a specific way” aimed at “healing and reconciliation” during a mass for priests and religious workers at St. Patrick’s Cathedral Saturday, according to the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
That, it’s to be hoped, will undercut the efforts of some left-wing activists, who are planning public protests and demonstrations, to steal the media spotlight.
But the pope will deal with other issues, too: The centerpiece of his trip is a speech to the United Nations on Thursday in which, like his two predecessors who also addressed the world body, he is expected to call for an end to war and stress the importance of human rights.
Some in the media are gleefully predicting a public papal rebuke of the US over the Iraq war.
But the Vatican has taken pains to stress its “common viewpoints” with Washington, such as “the sense of the value of religion, not only in private life, but also in public life.”
During his three days in this city, Benedict will pay tribute to the victims of 9/11 in what promises to be a moving ceremony at Ground Zero; pay a historic visit to the Park East Synagogue and then close his trip by celebrating mass at Yankee Stadium.
It is going to be a momentous – and a memorable – week, in other words.
Welcome, Pope Benedict.