President Bush took a close look at his gifts, an etching and a medallion, from Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday.
ROME, June 9 — President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI, both religious conservatives, met for the first time on Saturday in the papal palace at the Vatican, where the pontiff privately expressed his concerns to the president about “the worrying situation in Iraq,” especially the treatment of minority Christians there.
President Bush met Pope Benedict XVI today at the Vatican for the first time.
Mr. Bush, speaking to reporters after having lunch with Prime Minister Romano Prodi, conceded that the pope had raised those concerns. He pronounced himself “in awe” of Benedict and said he felt he had been “talking to a very smart, loving man.”
The president said he reminded the pope of America’s commitment to spend more on AIDS in Africa and American attempts to “feed the hungry.” And the two talked about immigration; the pontiff is apparently watching the immigration legislation debate in the United States with great interest. But Iraq loomed large over their hourlong session in the grand and elegant private papal library, with its plush regal chairs, ceiling frescoes and a crucifix by Giotto.
Many Italians have been against the war, and Italy pulled the last of its troops out of Iraq last year. On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters — including antiwar demonstrators — turned out for anti-Bush marches, some of which turned violent in the early evening. Protesters in Rome’s downtown historic district lobbed beer bottles and rocks that bounced off the plastic shields of the riot police officers, who fired at least one round of tear gas to break up the demonstration.
Benedict, like Pope John Paul II before him, has expressed deep concerns not only about Christians in Iraq, as the president suggested, but also about violence there and the war more broadly. When he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became pope, he made a much-quoted remark dismissing the idea of Iraq as a “just war” — a topic Mr. Bush said did not come up on Saturday.
“We didn’t talk about ‘just war,’ ” the president said, addressing reporters in a courtyard of the Chigi Palace, the seat of the Italian government, with Prime Minister Prodi by his side. “He did express deep concerns about the Christians inside Iraq, that he was concerned that the society that was evolving would not tolerate the Christian religion. And I assured him we’re working hard to make sure that people lived up to the Constitution, the modern Constitution voted on by the people that would honor people from different walks of life and different attitudes.”
The Vatican described the session as “cordial,” and the pope apparently did not go as far as his predecessor, who in 2004 urged Mr. Bush to end the “grave unrest” in Iraq.
The Vatican did not release the exact substance of the meeting. A church statement, however, said that both the pope and his secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who also met Mr. Bush, raised “Israeli-Palestinian questions, Lebanon, the worrying situation in Iraq and the critical conditions in which the Christian community finds itself.”
Until Saturday, talk of Iraq had been largely missing from Mr. Bush’s eight-day, six-country European tour. There was little talk of it in Prague, where Mr. Bush emphasized his freedom agenda, or in Heiligendamm, Germany, where leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized nations turned their attention to climate change and aid to poor nations, or in Poland, where missile defense was the central issue.
But here in Italy, where Mr. Bush’s policies on Iraq and the global war on terrorism arouse intense passions, he found himself once again in the war’s shadow — not only in Vatican City, but also in the streets of downtown Rome, which were virtually shut down by a heavy police presence anticipating the protests.
The protesters — a mix of antiglobalists, members from left wing and radical groups and other citizens — wound their way down Rome’s Via Cavour from Piazza Della Repubblica and ended at Piazza Navona. One demonstrator, Michela Chimetto, a 37-year-old office assistant who was in town from Vicenza, where the United States has faced sharp protests in the past about plans to expand a military base, pronounced Mr. Bush “the worst president the United States ever had.”
The protest did not turn violent until the evening, when Mr. Bush was miles away, at the United States ambassador’s residence on the other side of downtown. There did not appear to be any injuries, and the protest ended around 8:30 p.m..
The Italian authorities had earlier been so concerned about Mr. Bush’s safety that the White House canceled plans for him to visit the basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, one of the oldest churches in Rome.
The church’s location, in a square surrounded by narrow streets, left Italian officials fearing that Mr. Bush’s motorcade could wind up surrounded. The president was to meet with a human rights advocacy organization there; the session was held instead at the American Embassy for “logistical reasons,” the White House said.
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