Vatican Radio, newspaper offer assessments of Obama inauguration

January 20, 2009

L’Osservatore Romano has published a positive assessment of President Barack Obama’s inauguration in its January 19-20 edition. Writing from Washington, Giulia Galeotti draws upon Daryl Pinckney’s comparison of the inauguration to the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany in 1989-- an apparent reference to Pinckney’s post-election analysis in The New York Review of Books.

The presidential inauguration, writes Galeotti, “constitutes a sort of liberation from the original sin of slavery.” She predicts that the new president’s oratorical skills will “inspire the spirit of national reconciliation of Lincoln, the beloved president … the Lincoln on whose Bible Obama will swear Tuesday.”

In covering the presidential inauguration, Vatican Radio interviewed Richard W. Garnett, Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. Professor Garnett commented on the new president’s openness to religion and predicted that under his leadership, the United States would continue to be less secularist than many European nations.

 

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Further information:

• The Stage is Set for Obama Inauguration
• I preparativi per l'insediamento di Barack Obama: Washington come Berlino Cade un altro muro da Washington Giulia Galeotti (L’Osservatore Romano)
• Obama: In the irony-free zone (The New York Review of Books)