Framing the pope's trip to Lebanon
by John L Allen Jr on Sep. 11, 2012
ROME -- Quite often, how an event is framed beforehand determines judgments after the fact about whether it was a success or a failure. In the run-up to Pope Benedict XVI's Sept. 14-16 trip to Lebanon, which unfolds against the backdrop of ongoing violence in Syria, there seem to be four basic competing frames.
These four ways of seeing what's at stake aren't exactly mutually exclusive, but they are clearly different.
First, there's the official line from Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, asserting the pope is not traveling as a "powerful political leader" but as "the head of a religious community" whose mission is to confirm the Christians of the region "who serve the communities in which they live through the witness of their lives."
In that sense, Lombardi told reporters during a Vatican briefing Tuesday, expectations of "great political interventions" from the pope during his three days in Lebanon "are not consistent with the spirit of the trip."
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/framing-popes-trip-lebanon