President Jimmy Carter's Handwritten Notes on Meeting with the Pope

In October 1979, when Pope John Paul II made his first papal pilgrimage to the United States, he took the country by storm. Describing himself as a “messenger of brotherhood and peace,” the pope traveled to six American cities preaching a message of freedom and human dignity to millions of Americans. Time magazine dubbed him “John Paul, Superstar,” for the enormous crowds that he drew and the wild enthusiasm they showed for him. On October 6, President Carter welcomed him to the White House where the two men met privately in the Oval Office for an hour. At the start of the meeting, these two deeply religious men—each at the pinnacle of power in their respective spheres—agreed to speak not as diplomats, but as Christian brothers. Eventually, their discussions turned to world affairs. But first, the President asked the Pope how he handled the adulation; John Paul II, who ministered to the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics and stood up to tyrants and dictators around the world with an age-old message of hope, said that he prayed about that more than anything. President Carter’s notes from that historic meeting are shown here. For more information about this meeting see the National Archives online exhibit Eyewitness.