On Iraq, pope's message to Bush is quiet but firmAmid antiwar protests in Rome, Benedict urges
the president to pursue a 'negotiated' solution
to violence.By Tracy Wilkinson and James Gerstenzang,
Times Staff Writers
June 10, 2007
VATICAN CITY — With Italians converging on Rome to
decry the war in Iraq, President Bush received a more
subtle but pointed message Saturday about America's
Middle East policy in his first meeting with Pope
Benedict XVI.
Benedict urged the president to pursue a "regional and
negotiated" solution to the violence engulfing the
Middle East, a Vatican statement said, and voiced alarm
about "the worrying situation in Iraq" and the plight
of the besieged and dwindling community of Christians
there.
-snip-By urging Bush to seek a negotiated solution, the pope
may have been condemning, however gently, the military
option pursued by this U.S. administration in Iraq, or
the hands-off approach taken until recently in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Still, the president was spared the more public rebuke
he experienced in 2004 when Pope John Paul II, after
receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bush,
condemned the "deplorable" abuse of Iraqi prisoners at
Abu Ghraib prison.
True to his personality and style of governance,
Benedict did not use Bush's visit to make public remarks
of substance and instead chose to deliver his message
in private. Bush emerged from the Vatican's regal
Apostolic Palace seemingly more subdued.
-snip-