His recent graduation speech at Notre Dame University drew protests. However, Obama won a majority of the Roman Catholic vote, has had cordial relations with many church leaders and lauds the church’s teachings on social justice and help for the poor. “The president, in both his words and in his deeds, expresses many things that many Catholics recognize as fundamental to our teaching,” McDonough said. “One is that the president often refers to the fundamental belief that each person is endowed with dignity, and as it relates to the issues I work on most frequently with the president, the president often underscores that dignity of people is a driving goal in what we hope to accomplish in development policy, for example, and in foreign policy.
” He said the president also had spoken about the late Cardinal Joseph Bernadin of Chicago, who talked about the “seamless garment” of respect for human life. “That garment speaks to not just taking care of the poor and the needy but also investing in the kind of health care infrastructure that would ensure that people like those on the South Side of Chicago, who the president is very familiar with, are oftentimes finding their health care not in publicly funded hospitals but in Catholic hospitals, for example.” As a community organizer, Obama was helped by financing from the Catholic campaign for human development, McDonough said. While opposing the president’s stand on abortion rights and stem cell research, the pope and the Vatican have been open to him.
The pope called Obama shortly after his election. The daily Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, ran a front-page editorial marking Obama’s first 100 days in office with positive words and a statement that he hadn’t turned out as “radical” as feared on ethical questions. Still, they disagree on some major issues. “I’ve had a wonderful conversation with the pope over the phone right after the election,” the president told Catholic reporters in Washington before leaving on this trip.
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