Vatican City - Pope Benedict XVI planned Friday to receive
US President Barack Obama at the Vatican, in a meeting in which they
were expected to discuss issues on which they have both professed
concern - global poverty and the environment.
Obama was scheduled to arrive in Rome in the afternoon after
attending, with leaders of advanced and emerging nations, the final
day of a Group of Eight (G8) summit in the central Italian city of
L'Aquila.
The meeting scheduled for 1415 GMT, marks the first between Obama,
a Protestant Christian, and the spiritual leader of the world's 1.1
billion Roman Catholics.
On Tuesday on the eve of the G8 summit, the Vatican published
Benedict's new social encyclical - a major teaching on the need to
base globalisation on God-centred ethical principles.
Through the timing of encyclical's release, the pontiff appeared
to send a message to Obama and other summit participants - a message
in many ways in tune with some of the economic and energy reforms
promoted by Obama since he took office.
In the document, Benedict outlined, among other things, the need
for a redistribution of the world's wealth in a way that favours the
development of poor nations, the promotion of workers' rights and
measures to safeguard the environment.
Benedict also called for the creation of a 'world authority' to
manage the global economy and prevent market speculation of the sort
that triggered the current financial crisis.
But he also reiterated the church's stance on the need to protect
the 'dignity of life' in all its forms - a position at odds with
Obama's support for abortion rights and stem cell research using
human embryos.
Citing Obama's views on such issues, many US Catholic bishops
earlier this year condemned a decision by the Catholic University of
Notre Dame to award a honorary degree to the US President.
To date the Vatican has adopted milder tones towards the White
House, to the extent that its newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, drew
criticism from several prominent conservative US Catholics for what
they saw as a too glowing appraisal of Obama's first 100 days in
office.
USA
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