The American ambassador to Italy had suggested that Ezra Taft Benson meet with the Pope. Benson raised the possibility with President David O. McKay, who asked that he avoid such an encounter. McKay worried about the image of a Mormon apostle paying his respects to the leader of the Catholic church.
"Really they [Catholics] have everything to gain and nothing to lose," he told Benson, "and we have everything to lose and nothing to gain." "I am in fully harmony with that feeling," Benson replied.
[McKay, Diary, October 1–2, 1957; Gary James Bergera, "Weak-Kneed Republicans and Socialist Democrats": Ezra Taft Benson as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 1953-61, Part 2, Dialogue : A Journal of Mormon Thought, (Winter 2008, vol 41)]
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