Protesters at the sites of the Holy Father's visit to the United States so far:

1. Protesters from SNAP calling for changes to policy regarding abusive priests
   
2. Protesters against the sex abuse scandal "cover-up"
   
3. Gay Catholics denouncing the Pope's lack of support for gay rights
   
4. Excommunicated supporters of women's ordination
   
5. Catholics who oppose the teachings of the encyclical Humanae Vitae regarding birth control (one of their major arguments is that American Catholics don't follow the teachings anyway)
   
6. Protestant protesters (I suppose that's redundant) complaining that Catholics have a Pope rather than "going directly to Jesus"
   
7. Hindu protesters who believe the Catholic faith is exclusionary to other religions
   
8. An atheist protesting the fact that a religious figure enjoys diplomatic status
   
9. The Westboro Baptist Church, for reasons only Satan knows (there are also protesters of these protesters)

It kind of seems to me that any organization that has ticked off that many disparate groups for so many diverse reasons (a) is very strong (almost... rock-like)in the face of fickle human opinion, and (b) might actually be getting something right, since it is at the center of a daisy of extreme views. And every bee knows that the center of the daisy is where the honey is.

Sources

• The BBC's slide show of the papal visit
  
• Reporter Glen Zimmerman's video blog
  
• NY1 online newschannel story
  
• Spero News story
  
• 365Gay story

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