Historical meeting between the Pope and the Italian President

"The real attempt at national unity perhaps took place yesterday [November 20th], with the first meeting between Giorgio Napolitano, a former communist who has become president of the Republic and Benedict XVI, guardian of the Catholic orthodoxy and successor of Jean Paul II', notes the journalist and writer Massimo Franco. This meeting has arisen to confirm the improvement over twenty years of relations between the Italian State and the Vatican. "Let it be said, Napolitano asked the Pope for help. A gesture that probably only a non-Catholic president could make without being accused of clericalism ... . Yesterday's brief encounter seemed marked and dominated by the present: a grave and uncertain situation, the prospect of a crisis, not of the government, but of the system, which is pushing Italy and the Holy See closer together."

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