Most religious believers are the type of person who seeks an authority to tell him what is absolutely right and wrong, they crave certainty. George W. is sick and tired of being a leader, and I'm sure he does know that he is widely considered a failure at that. How relieving it must be for him to find the one person in the world many people believe to be the highest authority after the one who doesn't answer. If he does convert, he gives the evangelicals and other fundamentalist Protestants one more justification, one man they can call a traitor, to call for a new Cold War of reformation, or even make a stand against what they believe to be the new Great Whore, the Anti-Christ of Rome. The Pope rejects the idea of ecumenical service anyway. Another few decades or more of religion starving in the West, and the death throes may spark another rekindling of the battle for the remaining believers. If we're lucky, the believers will finally turn away from organized religion, and if we're even more lucky, they won't turn to woo instead.