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

Word 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.