Pope Benedict XVI comes to Washington this week a virtual stranger in the United States, home to the third-largest Catholic flock on the planet. But his itinerary, which includes stadium-sized Masses for tens of thousands of followers, will provide an opportunity to change his image as a dour disciplinarian.
Three years into his papacy, the 80-year-old pope enjoys nowhere near the public affection, let alone the adoration, that made Pope John Paul II's visit to Baltimore in 1995 such a rapturous event for so many.
Just ask retired teacher Lou Williams. In 2005, he impulsively bought a $2,200 plane ticket and flew to Rome for Pope John Paul's funeral. As a Catholic, he says he wanted to say goodbye in person to the revered, rock star-popular pontiff.
By contrast, when Williams heard that during his first visit to America Pope Benedict would visit Washington, the Baltimore resident was not especially excited. Sure, he tried (and failed) to get a ticket for Thursday's Mass at Nationals Park. But he did so "just to be there, show respect."
To him, the big difference between the popes is the professorial pope's absence of charisma. In Williams' arid observation, "He doesn't have it at all."
At least Williams has an opinion of this pope, and actually likes his conservative views. Some 80 percent of Americans, and 63 percent of Catholics, know little or nothing about him, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center. In another survey, by Marist College, one in six Americans had never heard of the man.
To the extent he is known, he may have a bit of an image problem, having been caricatured as a "Rottweiler" in his former job as defender of church doctrine. It probably has not helped that the only biographical fact most people knew about the new pope was that he had been in the Hitler Youth and that one of his few well-publicized acts as pope was a speech many Muslims decried as anti-Islam.
Well, Americans are in for a surprise, says Baltimore Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, who has observed the pope over many years. "There is a magnetism to him, and that's going to come across. I think people will come away pretty impressed."
Facing challenges
Pope Benedict is the leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics at a time when the church faces big challenges here and abroad. In Europe, the pope sees rising secularism as a major threat. In this country, the Catholic Church has lost so many native-born congregants - some because of the priest sex abuse crisis - that fully 10 percent of American adults say they are former Catholics, according to another Pew survey.
