{"id":6917,"date":"2006-06-26T23:39:52","date_gmt":"2006-06-26T23:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-pope-and-the-president.html"},"modified":"2006-06-26T23:39:52","modified_gmt":"2006-06-26T23:39:52","slug":"the-pope-and-the-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-pope-and-the-president.html","title":{"rendered":"The Pope and the President"},"content":{"rendered":"

More on the Arroyo meeting:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Well done," Pope Benedict XVI told Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as she handed him a copy of the law she recently signed outlawing the death penalty in the Philippines.<\/p>\n

At the end of a June 26 meeting with the pope, Arroyo gave the pope a statue of Our Lady of Guidance and a copy of the law in a leather case, telling him, "These are two expressions of the faith of the Filipino people."<\/p>\n

After the pope gave her some medals, she spent a couple of moments digging in her purse before pulling out her rosary and asking Pope Benedict to bless it.<\/p>\n

Earlier June 26 in Manila, Philippines, members of the opposition parties filed an impeachment complaint against Arroyo in the House of Representatives, alleging that she has condoned political killings and violated the constitution to silence dissent. She and her supporters deny the charges.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Another view:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Notwithstanding the papal audience, Arroyo\u2019s trip did not meet the approval of the whole national Church. Mgr Oscar Cruz, archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan, said \u201cgiven that there are questions about the legitimacy of the presidential election, it is not appropriate that Arroyo does to Benedict what she had done with John Paul II.\u201d The archbishop was referring to post-electoral statements made by the president, who in 2004, had said her election \u201chad the blessing of John Paul II, the Pope whose heart was arguably closest to Filipinos\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More on the Arroyo meeting: Well done," Pope Benedict XVI told Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as she handed him a copy of the law she recently signed outlawing the death penalty in the Philippines. At the end of a June 26 meeting with the pope, Arroyo gave the pope a statue of Our Lady of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pope and the President - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-pope-and-the-president.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Pope and the President - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"More on the Arroyo meeting: Well done," Pope Benedict XVI told Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as she handed him a copy of the law she recently signed outlawing the death penalty in the Philippines. At the end of a June 26 meeting with the pope, Arroyo gave the pope a statue of Our Lady of…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-pope-and-the-president.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-06-26T23:39:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Pope and the President - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/the-pope-and-the-president.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Pope and the President - Via Media","og_description":"More on the Arroyo meeting: Well done," Pope Benedict XVI told Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as she handed him a copy of the law she recently signed outlawing the death penalty in the Philippines. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}