For some occasions only leather will do
10/07/2009
Leather featured in the gifts that world leaders exchanged with Pope Benedict XVI before and after the G8 Summit in L’Aquila from July 8–10. In the days immediately before and after the event, a number of the participants made the 90-kilometre detour to the Vatican to meet the Pope.
Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, visited the Vatican on his way to the summit. As well as a case of Australian wine, he presented the Pope with a document from the Canberra parliament, bound in leather. The document recorded Mr Rudd’s formal apology to aboriginal people in February 2008 for the way the state handled their children in the past.
In return, the Pope gave Mr Rudd a copy of his latest encyclical letter, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), also bound in leather.
Pope Benedict gave the same leather-bound gift to President Barack Obama of the US, who visited the Vatican at the end of the L’Aquila summit.
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