Pope, Bush to discuss differences

By Peggy Polk
Religion News Service

PIER PAOLO CITO / AP A girl rides a bike towards Italian police in riot gear during a protest against a visit by President Bush in Rome.

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President Bush arrived in Italy early today for a 36-hour visit to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the city's liberation in World War II.

John Paul, who is debilitated by Parkinson's disease and painful arthritis, has appeared stronger and more vigorous in recent months, and has maintained his normal schedule of audiences and religious celebrations.

Bush rearranged his own schedule, leaving for Rome on Thursday night, in order to meet with the pope at midday Friday for an audience expected to center on terrorism, Iraq and the Middle East — and perhaps win the president some Catholic votes in November. The president's previous meetings with the pope have been markedly cordial. Bush, a born-again Christian, and the pope see eye-to-eye on major issues of morality, sharing the same tough anti-abortion stance. It will be Bush's third papal audience but his first since the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq, which the pope strongly opposed, and the collapse of the "road map" to end the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, a high papal priority.

	Pope John Paul II

Vatican officials have said they were appalled by scenes of abuse to which Iraqi prisoners have been subjected, and they criticized the Bush administration's use of repressive means to fight the war against terrorism. "The struggle against terrorism does not justify the abandonment of a state of law because the means do not justify the end," Cardinal Pio Laghi, a former Vatican envoy to Washington and close friend of Bush's father, said in a recent interview.

Bush will award Pope John Paul II the Presidential Medal of Freedom Friday, the highest U.S. civilian award, a U.S. official said yesterday.

While in Rome, Bush will also meet Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a staunch U.S. ally in Iraq. Most Italians oppose the war and want Italy to withdraw its 2,700 troops.

Bush will pay tribute at a memorial to one of the worst Nazi atrocities in occupied Italy, when German troops killed 335 innocent Italian men in retaliation for an attack by Italian partisans the day before. The site of the March 24, 1944, slaughter was an abandoned quarry now known as the Fosse Ardeatine, the Ardeatine Graves, off the ancient Appian Way. The atrocity occurred 24 hours after a partisan-attack in central Rome that killed 33 members of a Nazi military police unit.

From Rome, Bush travels tomorrow to France, where he will meet with French President Jacques Chirac in Paris before heading to Normandy on Sunday to participate in a ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of D-Day. He will then go immediately to Sea Island, Ga., to serve as host for the annual Group of Eight economic summit of major democracies.

Later in the month, he travels to Ireland for a European Union summit and to Turkey for a NATO meeting.

Information from The Associated Press and Reuters is included in this report.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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