As head of state at the Vatican, not to mention the leader of the world's 1.2 billion catholics, protocol requires visitors to bow to him when they meet him at the Holy See.
But Francis, who has made the forgetting of formalities a trademark of his papacy, bowed when he met a smiling Rania as she visited the Vatican with her husband King Abdullah II on Thursday.
"Up until the 19th century visitors would kiss the pope's shoes, and the tradition is still that all visitors, women included, bow to him, but Francis behaves as he did before he became pope and is not interested in protocol," a senior Vatican official told The Daily Telegraph. » | Tom Kington, Rome | Friday, August 30, 2013
