President Obama to offer Pope Heartfelt White house Welcome

President Barack Obama will host Pope Francis at the White
House for the first time Wednesday, warmly embracing the
Catholic pontiff seen as both a moral authority and potent
political ally.
The packed and bedecked South Lawn will echo
to strains of the Pontifical Anthem and a
thundering 21-gun salute, as the 78-year-old is
afforded a full ceremonial welcome on his
historic maiden visit to the United States.
Washington — a city that ordinarily shrugs its
shoulders when presidents, queens and sheikhs
roll through town — has been enveloped in
Pope-mania and so has the White House.
Obama made an exceedingly rare trip to the
airport to meet the Argentine’s plane Tuesday,
bringing his wife, daughters, Vice President Joe
Biden and his extended family to underscore the
point.
The effusive greeting is part protocol, part
politics — reflecting common ground between
the protestant president and the Jesuit pope on
a gamut of issues from climate change, to
inequality, to immigration, to US engagement
with Cuba.
The visit is a political mirror of Pope Benedict’s
2008 visit to George W. Bush’s White House.
Those two men were as conservative as their
current successors are progressive.
Still, the White House is desperate to avoid
suggestions it is co-opting a holy man revered
by America’s roughly 70 million Catholics to
batter Republican foes in Congress.
“The goal of this meeting is to give the two men
the opportunity to talk about their shared
values,” said White House spokesman Josh
Earnest.
“There’ll be time for politics, frankly, the other
364 days of the year,” he said.
“At least for that one meeting, it will be an
opportunity for the president to put politics
aside and have an opportunity to talk about the
values that he and the pope have in common.”
Francis has signaled he is also unlikely to wade
directly into America’s bitterly fought politics.
The Vatican played a crucial role in brokering
talks between Havana and Washington that led
to the recent restoration of diplomatic ties after
more than half a century.
Before leaving Cuba on Tuesday, Francis urged
Cubans “to build bridges, break down walls, sow
seeds of reconciliation,” in comments that
appeared to allude to the nascent reconciliation
across the Florida Straits.
– ‘Against all embargoes’ –
But the pope also told reporters that he would
not specifically raise Washington’s embargo of
Cuba in his speech Thursday before American
lawmakers who largely favor taking a tough line
with Havana.
“The Holy See is against this embargo, but it is
against all embargoes,” he said.
Yet there is no mistaking the value of enlisting a
popular pope’s moral authority and offering
him America’s largest political platform.
Even half of those Americans who hold an
unfavorable view of the Catholic Church like
Pope Francis, according to a recent Washington
Post-ABC poll.
Francis will make two key speeches during his
US visit, the address to Congress and another to
the United Nations on Friday.
Topics will include critiques of the dominance of
finance and technology; a condemnation of
world powers over the conflicts gripping the
planet; appeals to protect and welcome
immigrants; and climate change, according to
Vatican sources.
That agenda tracks so closely with Obama’s
efforts to introduce immigration reform, as well
as domestic and international limits on carbon
emissions, that Republicans are already crying
foul.
Congressman Paul Gosar, who is Catholic,
declared he would boycott the pontiff’s historic
address to Congress to protest his “leftist”
views.
During the historic six-day trip to the spiritual
home of capitalism Francis will also preside
over an inter-faith ceremony at Ground Zero,
visit a Harlem Catholic school and greet crowds
on a procession through Central Park.
He will wrap up his trip Saturday and Sunday in
Philadelphia at an international festival of
Catholic families.