And CBS writes, "Conservatives claim he bowed."
Bishop Ratzinger writes “In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the verb barak, ‘to kneel’, is cognate with the word berek, ‘knee’. The Hebrews regarded the knees as a symbol of strength, to bend the knee is, therefore, to bend our strength before the living God, an acknowledgment of the fact that all that we are we receive from Him.”
0 bent his knee before the king, a clear sign of submission. This was not merely an act of respect. It was a personal surrender of authority to a superior, in fact, the one who has mentored and sponsored him throughout his career.