What should we make of Pope Francis bowing when greeting people?

popequeen_2657382bWord is racing around the Catholic blogosphere that Pope Francis recently bowed to Queen Rania of Jordan.

Is this yet another stunning break with tradition on the part of Pope Francis?

Has he overturned 2,000 years of tradition?

Is this one of the signs of the apocalypse?

Is it no big deal?

Let’s look at the question . . .

 

According to the Telegraph

At the root of the current gbuzz is a story published by the British newspaper/website The Tablet.

It has the provocative headline:

Pope breaks with protocol by bowing to Queen Rania of Jordan

And it immediately says:

The Pope has broken yet another point of Vatican protocol by bowing when he met Queen Rania of Jordan.

You can see how they’re fitting this into the pre-existing narrative of Francis-the-iconoclast (“broken yet another point”).

It goes on to say:

As head of state at the Vatican, not to mention the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion catholics, protocol requires visitors to bow to him when they meet him at the Holy See.

But Francis, who has made the forgetting of formalities a trademark of his papacy, bowed when he met a smiling Rania as she visited the Vatican with her husband King Abdullah II on Thursday.

Okay, wait.

The first paragraph tells us that other people are supposed to bow to him. It doesn’t say anything about whether popes ever bow back.

One might suppose that they wouldn’t, at least historically . . .

“Up until the 19th century visitors would kiss the pope’s shoes, and the tradition is still that all visitors, women included, bow to him, but Francis behaves as he did before he became pope and is not interested in protocol,” a senior Vatican official told The Daily Telegraph.

Great. Now we have an unnamed Vatican official involved. Off-the-cuff remarks from them are always helpful in sorting out a news story. (Sigh.)

The bit about kissing the pope’s shoes “up until the 19th century” is interesting, but where does it say that popes don’t ever bow to people these days?

KEEP READING. 

 

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

3 thoughts on “What should we make of Pope Francis bowing when greeting people?”

  1. As a benighted prot I just can’t believe the Catholic Church’s love affair with Mohammedanism.

    Didn’t JP2 kiss the Koran?

    The pope would dialogue with the devil and proclaim it the greatest ecumenical breakthrough in history.

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