Speaking as a devout Catholic here: this Pope better watch his mouth. He is getting himself into trouble with sloppy statements. Denial of God is a mortal sin. No one with mortal sin is going to heaven. Period.
As far as Bush goes, he is a good man and a good Christian. But politically, he was way off base thinking that "democracy" in a Middle Eastern context would do anything but put the screws to the ancient Christian communities that lived there. We should've insisted point blank as a sine qua non of any occupation/military engagement that the Christians in these countries *would be protected and defended by law*. The minute there was *any* violence in a church in Iraq, Afghanistan, or whatever we should've been on them like white on rice.
Our apostasy is getting Christians around the world killed because we are too wishy washy to stand up for them.
I do not want to get into your theological issues. But the foreign policy causation is worse than you suggest! In several very striking instances, we directly helped to enable, even fund, the persecution of Christians, during the Dean Rusk era, and in other instances, since. (See American Foreign Policy.) There can be no moral justification for some of these misdeeds; and they were never in real American interests..
And see, my reply #18, above.
William Flax