Obama to Welcome Pope Francis with Elaborate White House Ceremony
WASHINGTON — President Obama will host an elaborate arrival ceremony at the White House for Pope Francis on Wednesday morning in a highly symbolic encounter between the political leader of the world’s most powerful nation and the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.
The pope is scheduled to arrive by motorcade at the South Portico of the White House, where the president will greet him and escort him onto a red-carpeted stage festooned with red, white and blue bunting and surrounded by color guards. The two leaders will listen as a Marine band plays the American national anthem and the pontifical anthem, and each of them will speak briefly.
As it happens, in a historical aberration, Mr. Obama will host such a ceremony twice in one week, with President Xi Jinping of China visiting the White House on Friday. But the pope has generated a wave of excitement in a normally jaundiced capital that ordinary national leaders rarely produce.
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