{"id":6931,"date":"2006-06-26T08:50:23","date_gmt":"2006-06-26T08:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/at-the-vatican.html"},"modified":"2006-06-26T08:50:23","modified_gmt":"2006-06-26T08:50:23","slug":"at-the-vatican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/at-the-vatican.html","title":{"rendered":"At the Vatican"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

More photos here<\/a><\/p>\n

President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines meets with Pope Benedict<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

In her departure statement, Mrs. Arroyo said her decision to sign the bill abolishing the death penalty was \u201cthe best pasalubong [gift]\u201d she could offer to the Pope. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time, I am going to have an audience with Pope Benedict XVI [at the] Vatican, and I will convey to him the support of the entire Filipino nation to his papacy. I also want to thank Congress for giving me the chance to bring to him the best gift our country can give: the abolition of the death penalty,\u201d the President said. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A bit of background<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The move was welcomed by the influential Roman Catholic Church and human rights groups that had put pressure on President Gloria Arroyo and previous administrations to scrap capital punishment. <\/p>\n

But others questioned what triggered the urgency to repeal a law that was rarely applied. <\/p>\n

"The unusual speed in a legislature constantly bogged down in gridlock raised cynical suspicions that lawmakers are in dire need of the Catholic Church’s approval and support. For what, the public can only hazard a guess," the Philippine Star newspaper said in an editorial. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More photos here President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines meets with Pope Benedict In her departure statement, Mrs. Arroyo said her decision to sign the bill abolishing the death penalty was \u201cthe best pasalubong [gift]\u201d she could offer to the Pope. \u201cFor the first time, I am going to have an audience with Pope Benedict…<\/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-6931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAt the Vatican - 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\/at-the-vatican.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At the Vatican - 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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\/6931","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=6931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}