c. 2004 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY (RNS) _ Pope John Paul II will meet with President Bush to discuss their differences over Iraq and the Middle East on Friday (June 4), then make a two-day visit to Switzerland where fractious Catholics are questioning the celibate, male priesthood and suggesting that the pope retire.

It will be a testing three days for the 84-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff, who has not traveled outside Italy since last September when his frailty on a visit to Slovakia heightened concern over his declining health.

John Paul, who is debilitated by Parkinson’s disease and painful arthritis, has appeared stronger and more vigorous in recent months, however, and has maintained his normal schedule of audiences and religious celebrations.

Bush rearranged his own schedule, leaving for Rome on Thursday night, in order to meet with the pope at midday Friday for an audience expected to center on terrorism, Iraq and the Middle East _ and perhaps win the president some Catholic votes in November.

The president’s previous meetings with the pope have been markedly cordial, not least because of the president’s vigorous pro-life stand, but Vatican officials have indicated that Bush might find himself in for a lecture this time.

It will be Bush’s third papal audience but his first since the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq, which the pope strongly opposed, and the collapse of the “road map” to end the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, a high papal priority.

Vatican officials have said they were appalled by scenes of abuse to which Iraqi prisoners have been subjected, and they criticized the Bush administration’s use of repressive means to fight the war against terrorism.

“The struggle against terrorism does not justify the abandonment of a state of law because the means do not justify the end,” Cardinal Pio Laghi, a former Vatican envoy to Washington and close friend of Bush’s father, said in a recent interview.

Tight security was planned for the Bush visit, which will be marked by at least five separate anti-war demonstrations expected to draw tens of thousands of Romans. Authorities mobilized a force of 10,000 police and soldiers, rerouted public transportation and closed the skies over Rome to commercial and private flights.

The pope is scheduled to leave for Bern, the Swiss capital, Saturday morning on a visit centering on a meeting Saturday afternoon with 10,000 young German, French and Italian-speaking Catholics in the city’s Allmend Ice Palace at the BEA Bern Expo. On Sunday, he will celebrate Mass in a park on the expo grounds.

The Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches said it had declined an invitation to attend the Mass because the Roman Catholic Church does not give Communion to non-Catholics except in unusual circumstances.

“We are part of a church that believes that Jesus Christ invited all Christians to his table,” said the Rev. Thomas Wipf, president of the Protestant federation. “Therefore, it would be painful to participate in a Mass knowing we would be excluded from Communion.”

The trip will be John Paul’s 103rd outside Italy in the quarter-century of his papacy and his third to Switzerland, where Catholics make up 43.7 percent of the population and Protestants about 40 percent.

Reports from Switzerland said the confederation has decided to normalize relations with the Vatican, which were interrupted 130 years ago by a controversy over the right of the pope to nominate the bishop of Geneva. At present, a Prague-based Swiss ambassador makes “special missions” to the Vatican.

But problems await the pope from within the church.

One recent poll found that 89 percent of Swiss Catholics favored making priestly celibacy optional, 76 percent supported the ordination of women and 90 percent backed inter-communion with Protestants. Another survey reported that 74.2 percent of Swiss and 74.9 percent of Swiss Catholics think the pope should retire because of age and illness.

The Catholic Synod in the canton of Lucerne called on Swiss bishops in November to relax priestly celibacy and to allow women to become priests to meet the crisis caused by a decline in vocations. Synods in three other cantons gave their support.

Bishop Amedee Grab of Lausanne, Geneva and Friburg, president of the Swiss Episcopal Conference, rejected the proposal, but the Swiss bishops were reported more favorable to the ordination of carefully chosen married men.

DEA/PH END POLK