President Bush, deeply unpopular here and met by boisterous protests, sought to impress Pope Benedict XVI and the Italian public on Saturday with his humanitarian record and downplayed differences with the Vatican over Iraq.
In his meeting with Bush, the Vatican said the pope raised “the worrisome situation in Iraq.”
“He was concerned that the society that was evolving would not tolerate the Christian religion,” Bush explained at a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi during the president’s swing through Europe.
“He’s worrisome about the Christians inside Iraq being mistreated by the Muslim majority.”
Bush met with the prime minister several hours after his first sit- down with Benedict. Bush and Benedict appeared intent to look beyond their differences in Iraq.
The war was vigorously opposed by the late Pope John Paul II, and Benedict, in his Easter message, denounced the “continual slaughter” in Iraq and said that “nothing positive” is happening.”
Bush said he assured the pope””whom he described as “very smart, loving man”””that the United States was working hard to ensure that the Iraqi people live up to their constitution in treating Christians fairly.
I’ve admire Benedict’s steady opposition to the Bush Regime’s war in Iraq:
“All I can do is invite you to read the Catechism, and the conclusion seems obvious to me…” The conclusion is one he gave many times: “the concept of preventive war does not appear in The Catechism of the Catholic Church.”
“There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a ‘just war’.”
“Nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees,” he said at his Easter 2007 Mass.
fascinating that all the irag war supporters and catholic supporters on t1:9 are so silent at the news of this meeting