The President, the Pope and the War

In an interview with the conservative Catholic television network EWTN, President Bush gave a good idea of how how he'll respond if Pope Benedict XVI critiques the war in Iraq, which the Vatican has opposed. Picking up on host Raymond Arroyo's suggestion that Pope Benedict is especially concerned at this point with protecting besieged Christians in Iraq, the president said the United States will have to keep troops there to accomplish that.

"We can keep our troops there long enough to have a civil society emerge and go after them, and go after these killers and bring them to justice so they quit killing people,” Bush said in the interview, which first aired on Friday night.

Whether that solution - to stay and fight - gets Bush through the Iraq issue during next week's papal visit to Washington and New York without putting the spotlight back on how strongly Pope John Paul II warned him against the war remains to be seen.

It didn't come up in the EWTN interview, but the potential backlash against Christians throughout the Middle East was one of John Paul's concerns when he opposed the Iraq war. And Benedict has shared his predecessor's worry about the Christian minority. In particular, he condemned the slaying last month of the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahno.

But don't expect much detail from Pope Benedict on how he thinks the United States should proceed in Iraq - church officials say that he wants to avoid political issues and is not looking to influence the presidential campaign. Do expect a broad but not political-sounding focus on peace, though.

Photo: EWTN's Raymond Arroyo shakes hands with President Bush at end of interview on Pope Benedict's April 15-20 visit to the U.S.