A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, OCTOBER 25 , 2021
BY MATT VISERWith Pope John Paul II, the
meeting stretched 45 minutes,
frequently interrupted by aides
who were brushed aside by a
pontiff interested in talking to a
37-year-old senator named Joe
Biden. With Pope Benedict XVI,
there was a long discussion of
whether politicians should im-
pose their beliefs on others when
it comes to church doctrine, an
exchange Biden described as “like
going to theology class.”
But it is with Pope Francis —
the longtime Jesuit priest Biden
will see Friday in a historic en-
counter at the Vatican — that
Biden shares the deepest bond. It
was Francis who comforted the
Biden family in 2015 after Biden’s
son Beau died. It was Francis who
met privately with Biden to talk
about cancer research. And it was
Francis whose photo Biden has
displayed prominently in the
Oval Office.
Biden’s meeting with the Pope
in the Vatican, shortly before he
heads off to a pair of international
summits, will carry deep political,
religious and symbolic signifi-
cance, as the nation’s second
Catholic president greets the
worldwide leader of the Catholic
Church.
But the resonance is also per-
sonal, given the similarities be-
tween the 84-year-old pope and
the 78-year-old president, who
have in a sense become allies.
Both attained ultimate leader-
ship late in their lives and quickly
moved in a liberal direction. They
have faced internal resistance.
Both are treated warily by con-
servative American bishops.
“Both could have become pope
or president earlier, but it didn’t
work out,” said John Carr, found-
er of the Initiative on Catholic
Social Thought and Public Life at
Georgetown University. “Both
were written off, Biden in the
campaign and Bergoglio before
the conclave, and both were sur-
prises.” (Francis’s given name is
Jorge Mario Bergoglio.)
Carr added that Biden and
Francis “now are in a position to
act on what they believe. But they
both also have a lot of the same
adversaries.”
Biden and Francis are each
fighting to change a culture after
a predecessor they regarded as
rigid and insufficiently inclusive,
igniting angry opposition that is
proving perhaps more potent
than they may have anticipated.
“They have in common that it
has become visibly harder for
them to keep together their peo-
ple,” said Massimo Faggioli, a
Villanova University theology
professor and author of “Joe
Biden and Catholicism in the
United States.”
“There is a culture of deep
suspicion against the leader,” Fag-
gioli said. “It’s no longer ‘I don’t
agree with him but he’s my pope
anyway’ o r ‘I don’t a gree with him
but he’s my president anyway.’ It’s
no longer like that for many peo-ple. So they understand each oth-
er on that, I think.”
That does not mean the two
leaders will see eye-to-eye on ev-
erything. Their meeting is likely
to showcase common ground on
climate change, poverty and the
pandemic. But some experts ex-
pect Francis to urge the United
States to do more on vaccine
distribution to poor countries,
and Biden could also face criti-
cism of his administration’s cha-
otic exit from Afghanistan.
The meeting also comes at a
time of dissension among Ameri-
can Catholic leaders. Biden’s elec-
tion last year triggered a dispute
among church officials over
whether Communion should begranted to Catholic politicians
who support abortion rights.
“The Catholic Church in this
country has never been as divided
as it is right now, and the meeting
is going to be put in terms of this
division in the American church,”
said the Rev. Gerald P. Fogarty, a
longtime religious studies profes-
sor at the University of Virginia.
The closest parallel to Friday’s
meeting may be President John F.
Kennedy’s visit with Pope Paul VI
in July 1963. Kennedy, the na-
tion’s f irst Catholic president, was
sensitive to political attacks that
he would answer to the pope
rather than the American people.
Biden has not faced the same
degree of open prejudice fromnon-Catholics.
He is perhaps the most reli-
giously observant president in
decades, one who rarely misses
Mass, often quotes scripture and
clutches rosary beads ahead of
key decisions. He was educated
by nuns at Catholic schools, and
several times in his life consid-
ered entering the priesthood.
But Biden’s positions have also
at times been at odds with Catho-
lic teaching, contradicting its
stances with his early support for
same-sex marriage and his em-
brace of abortion rights.
He has on occasion lost his
temper with those who point out
such discrepancies. “The next Re-
publican that tells me I’m notreligious, I’m going to shove my
rosary down their throat,” he said
in 2005.
Some Catholics’ distrust of
Francis comes partly from the
same American bishops who have
questioned whether Biden
should be granted Communion.
Just after Biden’s election, the
leadership of the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops declared his
abortion policies a “problem” for
a Catholic who attends Mass, and
a proposal was made to create a
document on the purpose of the
Eucharist, or Holy Communion,
the consecrated host that repre-
sents the body of Christ and is one
of the most sacred sacraments in
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGEBiden will visit Pope Francis in a meeting that resonates
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Pope Francis, between then-Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), waves to a crowd on Capitol Hill after remarks to Congress in 2015.*Excludes repairs. Not valid on previous orders or in combination with other off ers, orders or discounts. Some exclusions apply. Residential installed sales only. Expires 11/11/21.
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