‘God love ya’: Warm relationship between the world’s most powerful Catholics on display as Biden and Pope Francis meet
After, Biden said Francis had told him he was pleased he was a “good Catholic,” and that he should continue receiving communion, despite opposition from some conservative American bishops over his support for abortion.
Even during the most formal of diplomatic occasions, Biden demonstrated an easy familiarity with a pope he has now met four times.
“God love ya,” he declared as they walked side-by-side through the papal offices, a familiar Biden-ism that was perhaps never more true.
The meeting stretched twice as long as the one Biden held with Pope John Paul II as a young senator. While the White House said afterward that topics like climate change and Covid-19 arose, Biden told reporters he discussed “a lot of personal things” with the pontiff.
The lengthy meeting, he said, was “wonderful.”
In extraordinary footage from inside, a talkative Biden engaged in a warm chat with Francis as they exchanged gifts and introduced each others’ delegations. At one point, Biden presented Francis a special coin with a deep personal significance: it bore the insignia of the 261st Signal Brigade, the Delaware National Guard unit in which his late son Beau served as a captain.
“I know my son would want me to give it to you,” Biden said. In 2015, the Pope privately counseled Biden and members of his family in the months following Beau Biden’s death.
Biden explained the coins are given to “warriors and leaders,” and called Francis “the most significant warrior for peace I’ve ever met.”
Later, the two men — both of whom ascended to their powerful positions relatively late in life — laughed over a philosophy of aging Biden attributed to the baseball player Satchel Paige.
“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” Biden asked, before giving his answer: “You’re 65,” he said, “I’m 60.”
Despite footage of an outdoor arrival, Biden’s visit was clouded somewhat by severe restrictions on press coverage; independent journalists were not allowed to see the two men meeting at all, and no live pictures of the Pope greeting Biden were transmitted.
Biden was the 14th US president to meet with a pope at the Vatican. President Woodrow Wilson was the first to do so in 1919.
Discussions about diverging viewpoints have occurred in meetings between popes and US presidents, such as when Pope John Paul II failed to convince President George W. Bush to halt the American invasion of Iraq.
A personal meeting
Biden’s meeting Friday was heavy 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 alongside frames of his wife and grandchildren.
The reason for that visit was the Third International Regenerative Medicine Conference, and — in a speech delivered with a massive bronze sculpture of the Resurrection as his backdrop — Biden made an impassioned call for developing new cures for the disease that took his son’s life.
“We had just lost my son,” Biden said at the start of his speech. “And he met with my extended family in the hangar behind where the aircraft was. And I wish every grieving parent, brother, sister, mother, father, would have the benefit of his words, his prayers, his presence. He provided us with more comfort that even he, I think, will understand.”
Ahead of their meeting on Friday, Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, a columnist for the Religious News Service and a former chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, told CNN that “the priority is to look for areas where they can work together with the leader who’s visiting. And if there’s problems with the country, to at least incrementally improve relations with them.”
“It’s a big difference whether you’re meeting with Joe Biden or with the head of China,” he added.
Biden’s long history meeting with popes
Biden has long found himself navigating the delicate politics that come with being a Catholic Democrat who supports abortion rights and gay marriage. Those convictions have often put him at odds with leaders in the church.
Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop for Washington, DC, has said he will not deny the President communion.
The communion refusal movement is driven by the extremely conservative wing of the Catholic Church, and any official statement on the matter would need to be approved by the Vatican.
Reached for comment, the conference referred CNN to the Vatican.
Biden has dismissed the effort, telling reporters over the summer it was a “private matter” that he did not believe would be successful.
Biden arrived at the meeting having already met Francis on several occasions, including when he attended Francis’ installation in Rome in 2013 and when he traveled there again for the medical summit three years later.
Yet it was Francis’ visit to Washington in 2015 that drove the two men together in new ways.
During his stop in Washington, Francis and Biden were briefly neighbors when the Pope overnighted at the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See, just across Massachusetts Avenue from the vice president’s residence.
Biden accompanied Francis on many of his stops, including 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 rostrum in the House chamber when the Pope delivered an address to Congress, he stood beside Francis during his speech to a crowd on the National Mall from the Speaker’s balcony and he saw the Pope off in Philadelphia after the private meeting with his family.
Francis clearly left an impression on Biden during that visit.
“He didn’t just speak about Beau, he spoke in detail about Beau, about who he was and about family values and about forgiveness and decency,” Biden told Stephen Colbert in December.
“I am a great admirer of His Holiness. I really am,” Biden added.
The relationship between the two men, the White House has said, “is very personal.”
Unlike his past meetings with Francis, Biden is now the president, elevating their talks to an official encounter between two heads of state. Still, it is unlikely Biden’s deep Catholic faith will not inform and guide his audience.
The tone for the dynamic between two heads of state appears to have been set since Francis’ call congratulating Biden on his presidential win 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 humankind on issues such as caring for the marginalized and the poor, addressing the crisis of climate change, and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities.”
Biden’s journey of faith
Biden has long attended mass, and it’s remained a near-weekly tradition since he’s taken office.
On the weekend of Biden’s Vatican visit, the President’s Washington, DC-based parish — Holy Trinity Catholic Church — told CNN it would deliver an intercessory prayer “that the meeting between Pope Francis and President Biden be blessed with wisdom and inspire the necessary actions to address the crisis of climate change. We pray to the Lord.”
Robert Krebs, a spokesperson for Biden’s Wilmington-based church — St. Joseph on the Brandywine — and the city’s diocese, said in a statement that “we pray that open and honest discussion between these two leaders will be productive in addressing the many challenges facing our country and world.”
Biden, who himself thought of becoming a priest after the deaths of his wife and daughter, maintains friendships and seeks guidance of several people in the spiritual community. A source familiar with the situation told CNN the President maintains a “circle of friends close to him, with whom he talks freely about his faith in spiritual matters.”
“The President speaks freely about his faith. And he speaks about it with a number of people,” the source added.
