The pope's long, winding road to the White House
Buried in the files of the Secret Archives of the Vatican, there is a report from 1853. It was written by the first papal envoy to the United States, Bishop Gaetano Bedini, who recounted a telling episode. He was celebrating Mass in the chapel of the Presentation Convent, in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington. A Protestant woman entered the church. Asked why she was there, she candidly answered that she wanted to check if it were true that Pope Pius IX's officials had horns on their heads.
On Tuesday, a century and a half later, a pontiff will enter the White House as a head of state and revered guest of the president of the United States. Benedict XVI's arrival marks a historic event: the first official visit since the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the United States and the Vatican just 24 years ago. Only John Paul II had been at the White House before -- on Oct. 6, 1979 -- but his meeting with President Carter was an unofficial one.
It took centuries to get to this point. The story of relations between the papacy and the U.S. is one punctuated by diplomatic and religious disputes and of frustrated attempts to establish formal ties. From the beginning, the Vatican viewed the New World as a "land of mission." It wanted to spread the Catholic faith among the fast-growing population and to establish ties with a country that clearly was set to become a world power.
But that wasn't easy. Catholic priests in the early United States preached in Latin or French because they spoke no English. As a consequence, they made few converts. Among Americans, Catholicism was perceived as a religion fine for Irish, Italian, French and Polish immigrants, but not for real Yankees. Or worse, it was seen as a religion of the poor. The Vatican also failed to grasp how widely the pope was viewed as a conspiratorial figure, menacing American freedom and independence. Year by year, the number of American Catholics grew, but the Vatican made few political inroads.
