Pope Benedict XVI asked the faithful yesterday to pray for the success of his trip to the United States, which begins tomorrow and will expose the shy and scholarly German-born pontiff to the glare of the global spotlight as never before in his three-year reign.

Vatican officials said that the Pope would not interfere in the US presidential election by meeting any of the candidates.

Speaking in English to pilgrims on St Peter’s Square, the pontiff said that his intention was to “share our Lord’s word of life” on his five-day trip, during which he will address the United Nations on human rights, meet President Bush and pray at Ground Zero in New York, described by the Vatican as the “emotional highpoint”.

Yesterday he declared, to applause from American priests on the square waving the Stars and Stripes: “Dear brothers and sisters, I ask you all to pray for the success of my visit, so that it may be a time of spiritual renewal for all Americans.”

Bobblehead Pope gives Vatican a headache

To the dismay of the Vatican, the Pope’s trip has spawned a large range of kitsch memorabilia including a bobblehead doll

Background

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The Pope does not have the charisma or showmanship of John Paul II, his predecessor, and has not travelled as widely. The US trip is only his seventh journey overseas since his election three years ago. One recent survey said that three of ten Americans did not know enough about Benedict XVI to offer an opinion.

However, he has developed a warmer rapport with audiences and the Vatican has been at pains to project a softer, more gentle image of a man who, as long-serving enforcer of doctrine under John Paul II, was seen as a rigid arch conservative.

John Allen, an American expert on the Vatican, said that the Pope had mistakenly been seen as “a kind of Darth Vader of the Church” and would seek to present “a positive vision of what the Catholic Church represents rather than what it is against”.

The pontiff’s relative inexperience on the world stage has led to slips, causing tensions with other faiths, and his performance will be watched closely by Muslims, Jews and Protestants. He is expected to pray for the redemption of Islamic terrorists “consumed by hate” when he visits Ground Zero on the last day of his trip, asking God to “put them on the path of love” instead.

Vatican sources said that this was not a call for the conversion of Islamic extremists to Christianity. The Pope has moved to strengthen dialogue with Muslims since the furore caused by his apparent description of Islam in a speech in Germany two years ago as inherently violent and inhumane.

The Vatican has also sought to reassure the Muslim world that the Pope’s baptism of a Muslim convert in St Peter’s at Easter was not part of “a new Crusade” against Islam. While in America the Pope will meet Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus as well as visit a New York synagogue to mark the Jewish Passover.

In a rare gesture, President Bush will meet the Pope at Andrews Air Force Base, with a crowd of 12,000 expected at the White House on Wednesday morning for the arrival ceremony. Explaining the elaborate welcome, Mr Bush said: “One, he speaks for millions. Two, he doesn’t come as a politician; he comes as a man of faith.” He said that he wanted to honour the Pope’s conviction that “there’s right and wrong in life, that moral relativism has a danger of undermining the capacity to have more hopeful and free societies”.

The Pope will also tackle the problem of falling numbers of priests, a crisis caused partly by the clergy sex-abuse scandal. More than 3,000 US Roman Catholic churches have no resident priest, and although the number of American Catholics has risen to 64 million, this is largely thanks to Latino or Hispanic Catholics, who make up a third of the total.

— To the dismay of the Vatican, the Pope’s trip has spawned a large range of kitsch memorabilia including a bobblehead doll. Official merchandise includes baseball hats, mugs, bumper stickers and keyrings and postcards. Unofficial items, however, range from an “I Love my German Shepherd” T-shirt to a “Pope on a Rope” soap, “The Pope’s Cologne” and a teddy bear shirt with the Pope’s face on it. The Washington Archdiocese has asked for an advertisement that uses the bobblehead doll to persuade people to take the subway to the Mass at Nationals Park to be scrapped.