Pope Visit to USA

[Icadon]

Pope Benedict XVI has touched down at Andrews Air Force Base to start a six-day, two-city journey that will take him from the White House to the halls of the United Nations. Security precautions have been taken in the air, on land and in the water for the visit.

 

[Mzee Mwanakijiji]

Kwanini amepokewa kijeshi wakati yeye ni kiongozi wa Kanisa? Nakumbuka alifanyiwa hivyo hata alipoenda Uturuki. Hata Pope JPII alipoenda Morocco alipokewa hivyo kijeshi...

 

[Nyani Ngabu]

Nilidhani ni kiongozi wa nchi pia...
Hata hivyo swala la mapokezi ni la nchi anayotembelea...na watakavyoamua ndio watakavyofanya.....

 

[BiMkubwa]

I think Bush borrowed a leaf from his visits to African countries. A first for the US president to ever go and receive a foreign dignitary.

 

[Njowepo]

Pope ni kiongozi wa kanisa na Nchi ya vatican.
So jeshi ni haki yake kama kiongozi wa nchi

 

[Gembe]

Nilidhani ni kiongozi wa nchi pia...
Hata hivyo swala la mapokezi ni la nchi anayotembelea...na watakavyoamua ndio watakavyofanya.....

Yeah at somepoint he is trying to learn from the best,He learn from Tanzania,as you can remember every leader was there,politicial,non political,religious walijaa pale..

mapolisi wote walijaa pale,makatibu wa wizara wote,nusu ya mawaziri walilkuwapo siku bush anakuja.

ila nadhani sababu ni kwamba Busha ni Mkatoliki,na hii ni kama heshima kwake.

 

[ishengoma]

sijui pope atakumbuka kumuambia bush kuacha ubabe?

 

[Dua]

Pope Benedict XVI's scheduled meeting with President George W. Bush Wednesday will be the 25th meeting between a pope and a sitting U.S. president. *(AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

*The leader of the world's Roman Catholics has been to the White House only once in history. That changes this week, and President George W. Bush is pulling out all the stops: driving out to a suburban military base to meet Pope Benedict XVI's plane, bringing a giant audience to the South Lawn and hosting a fancy East Room dinner.

These are all firsts.

Mr. Bush has never before given a visiting leader the honor of picking him up at the airport. In fact, no president has done so at Andrews Air Force Base, the typical landing spot for modern leaders.

A crowd of up to 12,000 is due at the White House on Wednesday morning for the pope's official, pomp-filled arrival ceremony. It will feature the U.S. and Holy See anthems, a 21-gun salute, and the U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps. Both men will make remarks before their Oval Office meeting and a send-off for his popemobile down Pennsylvania Avenue.

The White House crowd will be the largest of Mr. Bush's presidency. It even beats the audience last spring for Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, which numbered about 7,000.

The evening festivities will mark the first time the Bushes have put on a high-profile meal in honor of someone who is not even a guest. Wednesday is the pontiff's 81st birthday, and the menu celebrates his German heritage with Bavarian-style food.

But Benedict's prayer service that evening with U.S. bishops at a famed Washington basilica precludes him from coming to the dinner, according to the White House. Catholic leaders will be there instead.

The president explained the special treatment - particularly the airport greeting.

"One, he speaks for millions. Two, he doesn't come as a politician; he comes as a man of faith," Mr. Bush told the EWTN Global Catholic Network in an interview aired Friday. He added that he wanted to honor Benedict'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."

One senior Vatican official told CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey that the pope's six-day visit to Washington and New York will be like a pilgrimage to the soul of the American people.

The Bush-Benedict get-together will be the 25th meeting between a pope and a sitting U.S. president.

The first did not come until shortly after the end of World War I, when Woodrow Wilson was received at the Vatican by Pope Benedict XV in 1919. The next was not for 40 more years, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw Pope John XXIII in Rome. President Jimmy Carter hosted the first White House visit by a pope, when John Paul II came on Oct. 6, 1979.

I think it's nice they're going to meet. They have a lot of things to talk about. But the notion that the world operates by the big guys getting together and cutting a deal is wrong.
George Weigel

Catholic theologian

Since then, such audiences have become a must-do. Every president has met with the pope at least once, often more. This week makes Mr. Bush the record-holder, with a total of five meetings with two popes.

There are more than 64 million reasons for this. Catholics number nearly one-quarter of the U.S. population, making them a desirable constituency for politicians to court. Worldwide, there are now an estimated 1 billion Roman Catholics.

"The pope represents not just the Catholic church but the possibility of moral argument in world affairs and it is very important for American presidents to rub up against that from time to time," said George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and biographer of Pope John Paul II.

The Vatican - seat of a government as well as a religious headquarters - has an interest, too.

"It wants to be a player in world affairs, and everyone understands that to do that you have to be in conversation with the United States," said John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the independent National Catholic Reporter.

On social issues such as abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research, Mr. Bush and Benedict have plenty of common ground.

But they disagree over the war in Iraq, just as Mr. Bush did with Benedict's predecessor, John Paul.

When Benedict was a cardinal before the 2003 invasion, the now-pontiff categorically dismissed the idea that a preventive strike against Iraq could be justified under Catholic doctrine. In his Easter message last year, Benedict said "nothing positive comes from Iraq."

Benedict told Mr. Bush at their first meeting last summer at the Vatican that he was concerned about "the worrisome situation in Iraq." Mr. Bush characterized the pontiff's concerns as mostly limited to the treatment of the Christian minority in Muslim-majority Iraq. The statement out of the Vatican suggested a broader discussion.

Weigel predicted talks this time would be focused almost entirely there.

Prominent Christians have been slain in Iraq in recent weeks and tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians are believed to have fled the country because of attacks and threats. "The Vatican is a very adult place," he said. "The arguments of five years ago are over."

The current pope's approach may be softer than that of John Paul, who turned from Mr. Bush's presentation to him of the Medal of Freedom in 2004 to read a statement about his "grave concern" over events in Iraq. But Benedict is no less committed to the church's stand on issues such as abortion, stem cell research and the death penalty, as well as war.

In fact, the death penalty is another area of long-held disagreement, with Mr. Bush a strong supporter. Benedict also speaks forcefully against punitive immigration laws and the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, and for environmental protection and social welfare - all in ways that often run counter to Bush administration policies.

But differences between popes and presidents are nothing new.

John Paul and former President Bill Clinton clashed - with strikingly sharp Vatican statements - on abortion.

Also, the church's opposition to almost any war but self-defensive ones has been a persistent theme in U.S. relations.

Pope Paul VI wanted to help mediate an end to the Vietnam War. John Paul also urged President Ronald Reagan against the arms race and spoke out vigorously against the Persian Gulf war under the current president's father. All these urgings, like the current anti-Iraq argument, were to no avail.

"Modern popes have seen themselves as voices of conscience and peacemakers," Allen said. "U.S. administrations haven't always been excited for them to play that role."

Weighty discussions aside, the talks with Mr. Bush are not likely to be the most-remembered or most influential part of the pontiff's six-day, two-city U.S. tour, Weigel said. That is expected to come when Benedict addresses the United Nations on Friday.

"I think it's nice they're going to meet. They have a lot of things to talk about," he said. "But the notion that the world operates by the big guys getting together and cutting a deal is wrong."

Pope Benedict XVI flew into Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, as he began his first visit to the US as pontiff.

His aircraft was adorned with US and Vatican flags for the occasion.

In an unprecedented move, President George W Bush was there in person to meet the head of the Catholic Church.

There were, of course, traditional kisses of the Pope's Fisherman's Ring from clerics.

A flash of colour... one of the Pope's distinctive red shoes is glimpsed as he enters his limousine to leave the air base.

The pontiff's trip will see visits to the United Nations and Ground Zero in New York.

The media in UK are fuming because Brown was relegated to ............

New York
It is a visit like no other. It is the talk of the town. It's the moment the president himself has talked excitedly about.
No, no not the arrival stateside of Gordon Brown. The Pope is in town.

Hours after the pontiff was greeted by George Bush and cheering crowds in Washington, the prime minister slipped into New York almost unnoticed. Like so many visitors to this city he may well struggle to get noticed Congressman Mark Steven Kirk, an Anglophile who's a member of the UK/US caucus, told me that "He's unlucky… the Pope has removed all of the oxygen from the system."

So much so that when CBS news ran an interview with the prime minister this week they felt the need to remind their viewers who he was telling viewers that "He's known as the stern Scotsman who rarely smiles. For a decade Gordon Brown was the serious partner in an unlikely political pairing while the affable Tony Blair served as prime minister…"

Now Americans certainly know who HE is. Our man in Washington for much of the time Blair was prime minister was Sir Christopher Meyer who says that "Gordon Brown didn't open his account when he first travelled to see George W. in a particularly successful or auspicious way. So the ambassador in Washington I think will have to work hard, much harder than I ever had to do… because he (Blair) was self-selling… Gordon Brown I think will need some more work." British officials are trying hard to hide their disappointment that the prime minister is not so much sharing the stage with the pontiff as being shoved into the wings. No, they say, THEY didn't know about the clash when the White House suggested the date for their man's visit.

However, they insist, headlines are far from the only test of this trip. What matters is this message which Gordon Brown has brought with him telling CBS that "European nations want a better relationship with America and I feel I can bring Europe and America closer together for the future. And that's going to be to the advantage of all of us."

That sounds like a Brown-ite version of that Blair-ite offer to be a bridge between Europe and America. A bridge destroyed by the war in Iraq. Brown senses that whether this country plumps for John McCain, Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton - all of whom he'll meet on Thursday - there will be a desire for America to re-engage with the world on climate change, global poverty and much besides.

Simon Rosenberg of the influential New Democrat Network agrees. He told me that "Gordon Brown is being very smart. I think he understands that he'll have an opportunity to help, and shape and guide and really influence the next American president."
Gordon Brown will press his case for the reform of institutions like the UN, and the World Bank and the IMF to cope with the new challenges of the new world. On Friday he will set out a foreign policy vision with echoes of the young President Kennedy in a lecture which his advisers have dubbed "A letter to America". Congressman Kirk told me that he sees a fundamental problem with that. "You can't write a letter to America unless Americans know who you are" he says before adding "at this point they don't know who he is. This prime minister has an extremely low profile in the United States. He hasn't done or said anything that the American public have noticed too much."

Thanks to the Pope and the president of South Korea who's here this week too, few Americans will learn who Gordon Brown is on this visit. Never mind, a prominent Brit has got the place pretty much to himself next week. In fact, he'll be being given an award for his services to transatlantic relations. His name (don't tell Gordon) is Tony Blair.

 

[Icadon]

I think Bush borrowed a leaf from his visits to African countries. A first for the US president to ever go and receive a foreign dignitary.

I thought President Clinton did, in Denver at the start of World Youth Day.

Bush has never before given a visiting leader the honor of picking him up at the airport. In fact, no president has done so at Andrews Air Force Base, the typical landing spot for modern leaders.

I guess there's a first time for everything....

 

[Icadon]

Kwanini amepokewa kijeshi wakati yeye ni kiongozi wa Kanisa? Nakumbuka alifanyiwa hivyo hata alipoenda Uturuki. Hata Pope JPII alipoenda Morocco alipokewa hivyo kijeshi...

Lakini funny enough last friday Bush kwenye interview na EWTN alisema...

The president explained the special treatment — particularly the airport greeting.

"One, he speaks for millions. Two, he doesn't come as a politician; he comes as a man of faith," Bush told the EWTN Global Catholic Network in an interview aired Friday. He added that he wanted to honor Benedict'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."

 

[Mzee Mwanakijiji]

kuna mtu kasema Bush ni Mkatoliki hapana... ila mdogo wake.. Jeb Bush..

 

[Kilongwe]

walewale..je na sisi haka kamungu ketu cha Tanzanite kakitaka kuonana na Kikwete mkuu mwanakijiji utatupress?

 

[Dua]

Pope John Paul in America

Pope Benedict XVI prays as New York Cardinal Edward Egan, left, looks on during a ceremony for first responders, survivors and victim's families at ground zero in New York, Sunday, April 20, 2008. The pope's six-day pilgrimage to the U.S. came to an end in New York Sunday with a Mass at Yankee Stadium and the solemn visit to Ground Zero.

(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Pope Benedict XVI prays during his visit to ground zero in New York, Sunday, April, 20, 2008.

(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

Pope Benedict XVI meets with a first responder after praying and lighting a candle at ground zero in New York, Sunday, April 20, 2008.

(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Pope Benedict XVI, left, walks the edge of the stage after conducting Mass Sunday, April 20, 2008 at Yankee Stadium in New York.

(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Pope Benedict XVI clasps his hands and smiles as he acknowledges the crowd during a Mass at Yankee Stadium on Sunday April 20, 2008.

(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Kevin P. Coughlin)

Family members of the Sept. 11 attacks, clergy, and officials walk down a ramp towards the memorial at the World Trade Center before a blessing by Pope Benedict XVI Sunday, April 20, 2008 in New York.

(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

Pope Benedict XVI, left, walks the edge of the stage after conducting Mass Sunday, April 20, 2008 at Yankee Stadium in New York.

(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)