Papal White House Visits Are Special, But They Sometimes Get Awkward

Pope Fran­cis’s ar­rival at the White House on Wed­nes­day will be marked with all the pomp nor­mally ac­cor­ded a head of state, not un­like the ce­re­mon­ies that wel­comed so many pre­vi­ous world lead­ers over the years. But as aides to Pres­id­ent Obama and sev­er­al earli­er pres­id­ents have learned, there is noth­ing routine when a pres­id­ent of the United States sits down with the lead­er of the world’s one bil­lion Cath­ol­ics.

For White House staffers, that is both good and bad. It’s good in that many staffers re­mem­ber pap­al meet­ings as one of the high­lights of their ten­ure. But it’s bad be­cause no one really knows in ad­vance what a pope is go­ing to say be­hind closed doors. Most sum­mits are tightly scrip­ted. That doesn’t hap­pen in a pap­al-pres­id­en­tial meet­ing, lead­ing to awk­ward mo­ments in some of the past ses­sions between 12 pres­id­ents and six pontiffs. Be­hind closed doors and away from the cam­er­as, the talks have at times gone from bless­ings and gen­er­al­it­ies to strong dis­agree­ments and spe­cif­ics.

Still, par­ti­cipants keep com­ing back to the unique­ness of these sum­mits between the world’s top tem­por­al and top re­li­gious lead­ers. “It was one of the most mem­or­able things per­son­ally that I worked on,” re­called An­ita McBride, who played the lead role for the George W. Bush ad­min­is­tra­tion in plan­ning Pope Be­ne­dict XVI’s vis­it to the White House in 2008. “Dur­ing my time in three dif­fer­ent ad­min­is­tra­tions, this totally rose to the top,” she told Na­tion­al Journ­al. “It is just on such a very dif­fer­ent level from everything else.”

McBride is Cath­ol­ic. But non-Cath­ol­ic staffers give sim­il­ar re­ports. Ari Fleis­cher, Bush’s first press sec­ret­ary, was present for two meet­ings with Pope John Paul II. He laugh­ingly ac­know­ledged he had not giv­en much thought to popes when he was a boy grow­ing up Jew­ish in New York. “But this is spe­cial stuff—even if you’re not Cath­ol­ic,” he said. “There is an oth­er-world­li­ness to it. Un­like a sum­mit meet­ing or oth­er routine vis­it, even with the most im­port­ant head of state, the papacy is unique. The trap­pings of of­fice are dif­fer­ent from any­where else.”

Be­cause John Paul was ail­ing and near­ing death, his last meet­ing with Bush was “mostly ce­re­mo­ni­al,” re­called Fleis­cher, with the pres­id­ent do­ing most of the talk­ing. “But it had such an im­port­ant air and feel to it. … Just to meet him was spe­cial. Popes have an air and a grace about them that sets them apart and makes them spe­cial even for those who aren’t Cath­ol­ic.”

Fleis­cher still treas­ures a coin giv­en him by the pope, just as McBride re­tains a ros­ary giv­en her by Be­ne­dict. She re­called that Bush ar­ranged for the pope to meet with the Cath­ol­ics on his seni­or staff as well as some Bush fam­ily mem­bers who are Cath­ol­ic.

That meet­ing made an im­pact on her. But even more, she said, she re­mem­bers how non-Cath­ol­ics were af­fected. “There was not one per­son who was not moved by meet­ing the Holy Fath­er. It doesn’t mat­ter what faith you are, there is something ex­traordin­ar­ily mov­ing and spe­cial about someone who is lead­ing so many people. It is just on such a dif­fer­ent level from oth­er world lead­ers.”

There have, though, been some ten­sions in the past sum­mits. Pres­id­ent Woo­drow Wilson, in­tend­ing to keep the pope out of the post­war peace talks in Par­is, ini­tially re­fused to vis­it Be­ne­dict XV. He re­len­ted only when Joseph Tu­multy, a Cath­ol­ic and Wilson’s closest aide, in­sisted. The meet­ing, on Janu­ary 9, 1919, did not go well.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port in the Na­tion­al Cath­ol­ic Re­view, Wilson was very much a “prickly Pres­by­teri­an” in the meet­ing, balk­ing when the pope offered a tra­di­tion­al pap­al bless­ing. Wilson de­man­ded an ex­plan­a­tion. When the pope said the bless­ing was for every­one, Cath­ol­ic and non-Cath­ol­ic, the pres­id­ent turned to his staff and asked, “Are there any Cath­ol­ics here?” The Cath­ol­ics knelt and Wilson bowed his head for the bless­ing. He then re­jec­ted Be­ne­dict’s 10-point peace plan and re­fused to in­ter­vene to give con­trol of Vat­ic­an City to the church in­stead of the anti-cler­ic­al Itali­an gov­ern­ment.

More re­cent meet­ings have gone bet­ter but still have had mo­ments of fric­tion or em­bar­rass­ment. John F. Kennedy, the first Cath­ol­ic pres­id­ent, was watched care­fully to see if he would kiss Paul VI’s ring. He didn’t, in­stead shak­ing his hand. Jimmy Carter had what was of­fi­cially billed as a pro­duct­ive and friendly meet­ing with John Paul II in 1979. Twenty-five years later—just months after the pope’s death—a fuller pic­ture emerged when Carter wrote Our En­dangered Val­ues. In the book, he de­scribed the pope as a “fun­da­ment­al­ist” and gave more de­tails of their meet­ing, the first-ever vis­it by a pope to the White House.

Carter wrote that the pope “seemed to wel­come a free ex­change of views.” So he “dis­agreed with him on his per­petu­ation of the sub­ser­vi­ence of wo­men and their ex­clu­sion from the priest­hood.” This, wrote Carter, was “har­mo­ni­ous.” But, he ad­ded, “there was more harsh­ness when we turned to the sub­ject of lib­er­a­tion theo­logy” in Lat­in Amer­ica. The pope had cracked down on the priests es­pous­ing that. But Carter called them “her­oes.”

The next pres­id­ent to meet with John Paul was Ron­ald Re­agan, who was a fa­vor­ite of the Vat­ic­an after he opened dip­lo­mat­ic re­la­tions with the Holy See in 1984. This act car­ried Re­agan past the em­bar­rass­ment of him no­tice­ably doz­ing off dur­ing a meet­ing with John Paul II in 1983.

John Paul was still the pontiff a dec­ade later when he sat down with Pres­id­ent Bill Clin­ton in 1994. The White House thought the talks went well. But the pope—ac­cord­ing to his sur­geon—thought oth­er­wise. He quoted the pope as say­ing: “The only lead­er I did not man­age to have a prop­er con­ver­sa­tion with was Pres­id­ent Clin­ton. I was speak­ing and he was look­ing at one of the walls, ad­mir­ing the fres­coes and the paint­ings.”

George W. Bush had sev­er­al meet­ings with popes, with the talks at times clouded by op­pos­i­tion to the Ir­aq War by both John Paul and Be­ne­dict XVI. Be­ne­dict privately ques­tioned wheth­er it was a “just war.” But he went out of his way not to em­bar­rass the pres­id­ent in his ar­rival re­marks at the White House.

When Pres­id­ent Obama wel­comes Fran­cis to the White House Wed­nes­day, it will cap months of plan­ning by aides. But Charlie Kupchan, seni­or dir­ect­or for European Af­fairs on the Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity Coun­cil, ac­know­ledged there could be sur­prises. “Not only is the Vat­ic­an not a ‘nor­mal’ coun­try, but this pope is a very in­de­pend­ent fig­ure,” he told re­port­ers. “And we know from his pre­vi­ous travels that we don’t know what he’s go­ing to say un­til he says it.”

The pope and the pres­id­ent broadly agree on cli­mate change, in­come in­equal­ity, and fight­ing poverty. They sharply dis­agree on abor­tion and the con­tra­cep­tion man­date of the pres­id­ent’s health care re­form. But, as staffers re­peatedly warn, the agenda is flu­id. Greg Schneiders, a key aide in the Carter White House who was some­times called the pres­id­ent’s “Cath­ol­ic ad­viser,” said it is dif­fi­cult to know what Fran­cis will want to talk about. Jok­ingly, he ad­ded, “He and Obama may dis­agree a bit on which of them is more in­fal­lible.”