Icon: enlarge
Pope Francis receives Armin Laschet for a private audience
Photo: --- / dpa
The reception couldn't be more euphoric than the black limousines stop in front of the hotel in the center of Rome on Wednesday lunchtime: Hundreds of girls and women jostle on the narrow sidewalk opposite, it's about the best view and free passage for a photo.
But not from Armin Laschet, who is now getting out of the car.
The female fans want to see Can Yaman, a Turkish model and a Turkish actor who is obviously very popular in Italy, who is visiting Rome these days and staying in the same hotel as the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister.
The CDU deputy federal chairman flew here for two and a half days to meet the Pope and the heads of the Italian government.
The occasion of the trip are the celebrations for the Day of German Unity in the German embassies at the Holy See and Italy, where NRW is the partner state.
These are top-class dates, even if there are no screaming female fans waiting for Laschet.
For the second time since 2018, the Prime Minister has the opportunity to have a private audience with Pope Francis.
That's worth something, as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for example, has to learn, who is in Rome at the same time - and is not received by the Pope.
In the Vatican you almost run into each other later, Laschet has just come from his meeting with the Pope with Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Cardinal Parolin - Pompeo has to make do with the chief diplomat of the Vatican.
Laschet and big politics
However, North Rhine-Westphalia is not an ordinary federal state, but the most populous and economically strongest.
Anyone who governs in Düsseldorf has therefore always been a kind of little chancellor, comparable at most with the claim of a Bavarian Prime Minister.
This is another reason why Laschet is received in Rome by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio.
With the Pope, on the other hand, it helps that the Catholic Laschet has maintained and cultivated his closeness to the Church as a politician.
"That was a very good conversation," he said on Wednesday afternoon after his meeting with Conte in front of the venerable Prime Minister's office, Palazzo Chigi.
A conversation "of great openness".
What people say after such meetings.
The general situation in the EU, Corona, the German-Italian relationship - at the end they also talked about the situation in Turkey and Lebanon.
Big politics, that is to say.
It is also a message to his party and in particular to the competitors in the race for the chairmanship, Friedrich Merz and Norbert Röttgen: Laschet, the statesman on the international stage.
The former Union parliamentary group leader Merz currently has no political office, Röttgen is at least the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag.
Laschet was already interested in foreign policy as a young member of the Bundestag in the mid-1990s, and in a small group he likes to talk about the visit to the then US President Bill Clinton in the White House with a group of young parliamentarians from the Union, as a MEP Laschet was later an election observer in the Palestinian Territories and responsible for Mediterranean policy in the EU Parliament.
But: Can the days in Rome with the beautiful pictures really help him in the race for the CDU chairmanship and the candidacy for chancellor?
The situation is currently as follows: As a man in the middle, head of the CDU state association with the largest number of members and an unspoken favorite of the Women's Union, Laschet should go on paper as the favorite at the federal party conference in December.
Only: In surveys, even Röttgen, who has no chance at the party congress, is ahead of Laschet as the desired CDU boss.
Merz is enthroned in first place by a large margin - the CSU chairman Markus Söder is therefore preferred as a candidate for chancellor by a large margin.
A SPIEGEL poll by pollsters from Civey even shows that the majority of Union voters would like Laschet to forego in favor of his team partner Jens Spahn.
Icon: enlarge
Laschet with Italy's Prime Minister Conte
Photo: Ralph Sondermann / dpa
Now, if the party congress takes place at all due to the Corona, it is not the citizens who vote in Stuttgart, but 1001 delegates.
But so far, euphoria for Laschet has not even arisen among his supporters.
In addition, if the polls stay that way, with the approaching federal and state elections next year, more and more delegates could ask themselves whether Laschet is really the one with whom the CDU will do the best possible.
Laschet does not challenge this, at least not in public.
What should he do but continue to believe that he is the right person for the party leadership and that in the end the vast majority of delegates will see it that way.
The Christian Democrat sees the strength of the Union parties in social consensus, not in polarization.
Laschet, 59, has always made politics based on this, sometimes more, sometimes less successfully - and he wants to stick to that.
"The Pope knows more than we think"
That is also why the meeting on Thursday morning with the Holy Father is so important for Catholics.
Francis is a political Pope.
Again and again he expresses himself sharply on refugee policy, speaks against the indifference in the world.
The new encyclical will be published these days, in which Francis will deal with the question of what society can learn from the corona pandemic.
That is also what concerns Laschet.
Above all: What politics can do so that the virus does not divide people even more.
After the one-on-one conversation in the Pope's private library, Laschet strolls across St. Peter's Square, and he is repeatedly approached by German tourists.
Of course, the CDU politician poses for the cell phone photos here too, the hygiene rules in the Italian capital are still stricter than in Germany.
A few minutes later he is standing on a roof terrace opposite St. Peter's Basilica, the mighty bells are just striking twelve.
It's warm in Rome, the late summer midday sun burns down from the sky.
Laschet reports on his conversation with the Pope.
A journalist wants to know whether Laschet's political ambitions were the subject and how well Francis knew about them.
The Christian Democrat grins and says: "The Pope knows a lot - more than we think."
Then he says that he has invited Francis to visit North Rhine-Westphalia next year.
There are different reasons for this, he says.
If the Pope accepts the invitation, he could meet the CDU politician in a new role.
Laschet is quite sure that it will turn out that way.
Icon: The mirror