Bush and Benedict: First meeting
President Bush did not have to face a fearsome Borgia or Medici at the end of his slow march, but he must have still felt some trepidation on his first encounter with the soft-spoken yet formidable Benedict XVI
Tuesday, June 12, 2007

George W. Bush is used to taking center stage, regularly passing from meeting to meeting at a hectic pace to carry out an ambitious agenda.

But after a flurry of intense meetings last week with the leaders of the world's most powerful nations at the G8 meeting in Germany, which Bush hailed as a success, he found himself slowed to a snail's pace, Saturday, June 9, during a solemn procession to meet the greatest spiritual leader on earth.

Led by two rows of finely-dressed noblemen who assist at papal events, Bush followed in the footsteps of countless other political leaders who, over nearly two millennia, have experienced the gravitas and grandeur of the Holy See on the approach through the Vatican to meet the successor of St. Peter. the rest