Pope Francis Breaks Protocol,Bows to Jordan's Queen

AP Photo/Maurizio BrambattiPope Francis greets Queen Rania of Jordan at the Vatican Thursday.

AP Photo/Maurizio BrambattiPope Francis, right, welcomes Jordan's King Abdullah II, centre, and his wife Queen Rania.

The Pope has broken another point of Vatican protocol by bowing when he met Queen Rania of Jordan.
As head of state at the Vatican, not to mention the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman 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 Queen Rania as she visited the Vatican with King Abdullah II.
“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 said.
It is not the first time the Pope has eschewed formality when receiving visitors. When Cristina Kirchner, Argentina’s president, met him in March, he gave her a kiss after she presented him with a gourd for mate, the traditional Argentine tea. Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, took the initiative when she met the Pope in July, kissing him on both cheeks.

AP Photo/Maurizio BrambattiPope Francis held private talks with Jordan's king and queen together on various situations in the Middle East, in particular on the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and the ongoing crisis in Syria.