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George W. Bush likes to say he's sprinting to the finish, and this week he certainly looks like it. At the White House today he laid on a full welcome for Pope Benedict XVI, complete with concussive 21-gun salute, multiple fanfares and Kathleen Battle leading the crowd in "Happy Birthday" in honor of the Pontiff's 81st. Later in the day he made a speech on climate change. On Thursday he sees the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and on Friday the South Korean Prime Minister arrives for a visit to Camp David. Bush then flies...
There are no speeches or writings, no public records to tell us what Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - the future Pope Benedict XVI - thought of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. But the influential prelate, then head of the Vatican's office for internal doctrinal matters, clearly had a forceful opinion. Soon after the bombs fell on Baghdad, the topic came up in April 2003 as Ratzinger talked with fellow Cardinals Carlo Maria Martini of Italy and Paul Poupard of France at an intimate Vatican diplomatic reception. A Church official present that evening remembers the typically soft-spoken German shaking his fists...
Pope Benedict XVI's trip this week to the United States will include high-profile visits to the White House, United Nations and Ground Zero. But no matter what political issues or media angles may be buzzing before take-off, the Vatican tends to stress the pastoral aspect of any papal journey. The six-day itinerary is above all stacked with church services, baseball stadium masses and Catholic institutional encounters to allow the pontiff to tend to his flock, and to the priests and bishops who do the ministering when he's back in Rome...
When Pope Benedict XVI touches down for his first papal visit in the United States next week, you may notice that he doesn't have the same onstage flair as his predecessor, John Paul II. But you may also begin to notice a very handsome man of the cloth never far from the pontiff's side. That would be Monsignor Georg Gänswein, the Pope's personal secretary, responsible for everything from deciding who gets to see Benedict, to keeping His Holiness on schedule, to discreetly handing him his papal reading glasses just before a homily or other public discourse...
...right-hand man. It was not expected to be a particularly long assignment, as the Cardinal planned to return to his private studies in Germany after the conclusion of the papacy of the ailing John Paul II. Of course, fate had other plans, and when Ratzinger became Benedict XVI, Gänswein moved with him across St. Peter's Square to the office next to the new pontiff in the Apostolic Palace...