NEW YORK (AP) – The pope has arrived. What do we do? Hugs? Selfies? Curtsies? How formal should we be with a man who telephones average people out of the blue and accepts pizza deliveries in the popemobile? Should we follow the advice of House and Senate leaders, who told lawmakers to avoid handshakes or conversations with Pope Francis as he entered the chamber for his speech in Congress on Thursday? Here’s some etiquette advice from a few experts skilled at being “in the wallpaper” of such VIP visits, the protocol officers who spend weeks or months planning every detail and know the taboos:
NO HUGGING THE POPE! OR NOT?
During the last papal visit to the United Nations in 2008, the instructions were clear: Don’t hug Pope Benedict. During a receiving line for U.N. staffers, he even stosod on a six-inch platform to help keep him out of reach.
But that quickly failed. “The first person walked up on the platform and hugged him,” says Alice Hecht, who was the U.N.’s chief of protocol at the time. In a previous papal visit, she says, someone even jumped onto the platform at the U.N. General Assembly for an embrace.
You try to create a zone of protection, Hecht says. “But of course, you never really know.”