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April 16, 2008

Pope visit: Hopes that church, U.S. can do good together

AP photo
Pope Benedict XVI opens his arms to the crowd from a White House balcony this morning, with President Bush at his side.

WASHINGTON -- A prominent politician and local Catholic religious leader sounded optimistic notes today after attending the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI as the White House this morning.

Monsignor Paul Theroux, vicar general of Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, has had much experience working on the travels of the late Pope John Paul II.

He said he believed that Benedict in his remarks at the White House was laying a foundation of themes that he will sound out during his visit to the United States this week.

Theroux took note of the pope's remarks applauding the generous American response to disasters around the world and speculated that –– perhaps at the United Nations later this week –– the pope will urge “we ought to be doing this all the time on a global level, every day, rather than just when catastrophe strikes.”

Former Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn, who was a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican during the Clinton administration, said he was reminded while watching President Bush and the pope today of the first meetings in the 1980s between President Ronald Reagan and John Paul II.

“When I was a kid we used to pray for the end of communism, never thinking that it would come about,” Flynn recalled of his school days in Boston.

“It took Ronald Reagan and it took John Paul II working together” to help trigger the fall of the Iron Curtain, Flynn said.

“That is the power of working together for a joint cause. Let us hope that these two leaders, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church and the leader of the United States can get together” to achieve another such unlikely achievement for the world.

-- John E. Mulligan, Journal Washington bureau

Posted by Andrea Panciera  at 12:34 PM | Permalink

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