What do Biden and the Pope have in common as leaders?
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Rome (CNN) -
The last time President Joe Biden visited the Vatican, he was still recovering from the loss of his son Beau to cancer a year earlier.
The reason for his visit in 2016 was the Third International Conference on Regenerative Medicine and, in a speech delivered with a huge bronze sculpture of the Resurrection as a backdrop, Biden made a passionate call to develop new cures for the disease that killed the way of your child.
Biden heads to Europe with a little less glitz and more work to do
But he also recalled a moment of kindness from his host, Pope Francis, who visited the United States in the months after Beau's death and was reunited with Biden's extended family when he departed the United States from Philadelphia International Airport. .
Biden will begin his European tour with a visit to the pope 1:24
"We had just lost my son," Biden said at the beginning of his speech.
"And he met my extended family in the hangar behind where the plane was. And I wish that every grieving father, brother, sister, mother, father, have the benefit of his words, his prayers, his presence. He provided us more comfort than even he, I think, will understand. "
Biden returns to the Vatican
Biden returns to the Vatican on Friday to meet with a pope who has provided family comfort and ideological inspiration to a president whose faith has long sustained his public and private life.
The visit is expected to address their personal relationships as Catholics and other key global issues, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday.
And their conversation is expected to address topics such as climate, migration and income inequality, important areas of consensus between the two.
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Biden will be the fourteenth president of the United States to meet with a pope at the Vatican.
President Woodrow Wilson was the first to do so in 1919. The Vatican canceled a live broadcast of Biden's meeting with the pope due to objections from journalists.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the Vatican will distribute a video of some parts of the arrival and greeting with the pope after the meeting, according to Bruni.
While areas of common ground are expected to be discussed, it is unclear whether the Vatican will put Biden in the dock.
There have been discussions of divergent views in meetings between popes and US presidents, such as when Pope John Paul II failed to convince President George W. Bush to stop the US invasion of Iraq.
But when White House press secretary Jen Psaki was pressed on whether the two men would discuss abortion and the president's stance in favor of it, Psaki said Wednesday that they are focused on areas of consensus.
"There is great agreement and agreement with the president and Pope Francis on a variety of issues: poverty, fighting the climate crisis, ending the covid-19 pandemic," Psaki said.
"These are all very important and shocking topics that will be the centerpiece of your discussion when you meet."
Symbolism
He also said Friday's meeting "has absolutely personal significance" for Biden and that he suspects it will be "a warm meeting."
The gathering will be loaded with symbolism for the nation's second Catholic president, who attends Mass almost every week, makes the sign of the cross during his speeches, and displays a photo of Francis in the Oval Office along with his wife's frames. and grandchildren.
Typically, world leaders offer a gift to the pope at the Vatican during his visits, and given Francis' humble approach to the papacy, the gift is unlikely to be extravagant.
Biden is also expected not to kiss Francisco's ring.
During past meetings with the parents, Biden has refused to do so, saying that his mother told him not to kiss the ring and that no one is "better" than him.
Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, a columnist for the Religious News Service and former chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, told CNN that "the priority is to find areas where I can work together with the visiting leader. And if there are problems with the country, at least gradually improve relations with them. "
"It makes a big difference if he meets with Joe Biden or with the chief of China," he added.
Biden's long history of meetings with the popes
Francis is the third pope Biden has met, following meetings with John Paul II while in the Senate and Benedict XVI during his time as vice president.
Biden met with John Paul II several times, the first in a lengthy meeting at the Vatican in 1980 to discuss the impacts of the possible collapse of the Soviet bloc, when Biden said the pope greeted attendees knocking on the library door. several times during the conversation.
But the president seems to have forged an even more personal bond with Pppa Francisco.
Biden comes to the meeting after having met Francis on several occasions, including when he attended Francis' Rome summit in 2013 and when he traveled there again for the medical summit three years later.
However, it was Francisco's visit to Washington in 2015 that brought the two men together in new ways.
During their stay in Washington, Francis and Biden were brief neighbors when the pope spent the night at the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See, just across Massachusetts Avenue from the vice president's residence.
Biden accompanied Francisco on many of his stopovers, even greeting him at the airport and sitting in the front row when he received an elaborate state welcome at the White House.
Biden was sitting just behind Francis on the House of Representatives rostrum when the pope delivered a speech to Congress, stood next to Francis during his speech to a crowd on the National Mall from the Speaker of the House balcony and saw to the Pope in Philadelphia after the private meeting with his family.
Admiration for Francisco
Francisco clearly left an impression on Biden during that visit.
In the year following the pope's appearances in the United States, Biden wrote in a short profile for Time magazine's "Time 100" that His Holiness "wowed America" during the trip.
And about five years later, as he prepared to assume the presidency, he still remembered the private meeting in Philadelphia.
"He didn't just talk about Beau, he talked in detail about Beau, about who he was and about family values and about forgiveness and decency," Biden told Stephen Colbert in December.
"I'm a huge fan of His Holiness. I really am," added Biden.
The relationship between the two men, the White House has said, "is very personal."
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Unlike his previous meetings with Francisco, Biden is now the president, elevating their talks to an official meeting between two heads of state.
Still, Biden's deep Catholic faith is unlikely to guide his audience.
The tone of this anticipated dynamic between two heads of state seems to have been set since Francis' call to congratulate Biden on his presidential victory last November.
At the time, the Biden-Harris transition team said in a statement that the "president-elect expressed his desire to work together on the basis of a shared belief in the dignity and equality of all humanity on issues such as caring for the marginalized. and the poor, addressing the climate change crisis and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities. "
Biden's journey of faith
Biden wrote in 2019 that he learned Catholic values "at my father's table, at Sunday Mass, and at St. Paul and Holy Rosary elementary schools."
The nuns at the school, he said, taught him "reading, writing, math and history, as well as the basics of decency, fair play and virtue."
He often wears his late son's rosary on his wrist and, in public life, frequently talks about the role faith has played in helping him overcome grief, including the fatal car accident that killed his wife and young daughter. and Beau's battle with cancer.
Biden has been attending Mass for a long time, and it has been an almost weekly tradition since he took office.
On the weekend of Biden's visit to the Vatican, the president's Washington parish, the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, told CNN he would deliver an intercessory prayer "so that the meeting between Pope Francis and President Biden will be blessed with wisdom and inspire the actions needed to address the climate change crisis. We pray to the Lord. "
Robert Krebs, a spokesman for Wilmington-based Biden Church, St. Joseph on the Brandywine, and the city's diocese, said in a statement that "we pray that the open and honest discussion between these two leaders will be productive in addressing the many challenges facing our country and the world. "
Biden, who considered becoming a priest after the death of his wife and daughter, maintains friendships and seeks guidance from various people in the spiritual community.
A source familiar with the situation told CNN that the president maintains a "circle of friends close to him, with whom he speaks freely about his faith in spiritual matters."
"The president speaks freely about his faith. And he talks about it with various people," the source added.
That broad circle includes meetings at the White House with various religious leaders to discuss Biden's political agenda, as well as personal friendships with clergy such as Wilmington Reverend Silvester S. Beaman; Sister Simone Campbell, former executive director of the NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, and Father Kevin O'Brien, a Jesuit priest who resigned as president of Santa Clara University in May following an investigation into conversations that had with graduate students at a series of informal dinners. The investigation found that he behaved "contrary to the protocols and limits established by the Jesuits" at those dinners, and that they involved alcohol. No inappropriate behavior was found outside of those dinners, according to a statement from the university.
Navigating politics and faith
Biden has long found himself navigating the delicate politics that comes with being a Catholic Democrat who supports abortion rights and gay marriage.
Those convictions have often put him at odds with church leaders.
It's an issue that has frustrated him for a long time, and once in 2005 he said, "The next Republican who tells me I'm not religious, I'm going to stick my rosary down his throat."
The U.S. bishops moved forward with a plan that attempted to allow individual bishops to deny communion to politicians who support abortion rights, setting up a possible public reprimand of Biden along with other prominent Catholic Democrats, such as House Speaker Nancy. Pelosi. But the conference has stressed that "there will be no national policy on denying Communion to politicians." And the latest draft of the document on the "meaning of the Eucharist," which the US bishops will vote on in mid-November, will not specifically address whether Catholic politicians are eligible to receive Communion. However, the bishops can propose modifications to the documents.
Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Archbishop of Washington, has said he will not deny the president communion.
The movement to reject communion is driven by the extremely conservative wing of the Catholic Church, and any official statement on the matter should be approved by the Vatican.
Upon receiving comments, the conference referred CNN to the Vatican.
Debate on abortion
While Francis has been staunchly opposed to abortion, describing it as "murder," he has avoided taking a firm stance on the idea of denying communion to politicians who support him.
He said last month that politics should not influence decisions about receiving communion and called for "compassion and tenderness" in those decisions.
Biden dismissed the effort, telling reporters over the summer that it was a "private matter" that he did not believe would be successful.
Reese said he does not expect the issue of communion to come up during the Vatican meeting.
"With the limited time they have, they are going to be dealing with big foreign policy problems, world problems," he said.
"We will have a photo, Pope Francis and Joe Biden, smiling and laughing together. And it will be quite difficult for the bishops to hit Joe Biden, after they have this smiling photo of the two of them," Reese added.
Pope Francisco
