The history of meetings between U.S. presidents and pontiffs

President Biden met with Pope Francis on Friday, in what was a lengthy exchange between America’s second Catholic president and the leader of the Catholic Church. The two figures share a close relationship.

Biden, devout in his faith, turned to Francis for comfort when his son Beau died and even has a photo of the pontiff displayed in the Oval Office.

During Friday’s meeting, Biden presented Francis with a symbolic coin that bore the insignia of the military unit Beau served in.

“I know my son would want me to give this to you,” he said.

Biden joins a long line of American presidents who have held summits with popes. Some audiences have been tense, with disagreements on foreign policy and refusals to follow protocol. Other exchanges have been affectionate, even emotional.

President Woodrow Wilson, a Presbyterian, became the first U.S. president to visit the Vatican in 1919. It was part of a months-long tour of Europe promoting his League of Nations in the wake of World War I.

During his meeting with Pope Benedict XV, the two discussed the need for peace after bloodshed but the meeting ended awkwardly: As attendees knelt to be blessed by Benedict, Wilson, who was not a Catholic, remained standing.

Forty years later, after the Great Depression and another world war, President Dwight D. Eisenhower paid a visit to the Vatican to meet with Pope John XXIII.

There was strong anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States, but the tone between the two leaders was positive. During the December 1959 meeting, they discussed the importance of spreading peace around the world, especially amid the creation of “tremendous weapons of destruction which now exist.”

Since Eisenhower, every president has met with the pope.

President John F. Kennedy was the country’s first Catholic president, a fact he downplayed while campaigning, once declaring, “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic.”

But his audience with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican was symbolic all the same.

The two met on July 2, 1963, just months before Kennedy’s assassination. Kennedy was greeted in Rome by cheering crowds as his motorcade made its way to Vatican City. There, Paul praised Kennedy’s efforts to end racial discrimination in the United States. They shared a powerful handshake, but Kennedy declined to kiss the pope’s ring.

Later in his time as pontiff, Paul became the first pope to visit the United States, meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson in New York on Oct. 4, 1965.

During their 46-minute-long talk at the Waldorf Astoria, they discussed the pillars of Johnson’s “great society” initiatives, including civil rights, education and poverty.

They met again two years later when Johnson surprised Paul at the Vatican around Christmastime and offered him a gift: a bronze bust of the Texan president himself.

President Richard Nixon traveled to meet with Paul in 1969. His successor, President Gerald Ford, made the trip to the Vatican in 1975.

In 1979, Pope John Paul II made history by becoming the first pope to visit the White House, where he met with President Jimmy Carter.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan and John Paul met at the Vatican. It was one of several meetings between the two leaders staunchly in agreement about the evils of Communism and the Soviet Union.

As he had in past summits, the pope that June, called for “ending the arms race” between Russia and the United States and “liberating resources” that could be used to feed the hungry.

The meeting took place on the backdrop of the Iran-contra scandal, which the pope did not directly address. But he did say, “Whenever moral and spiritual values are rejected, or even given mere lip service and not truly integrated into daily life, then we, as individuals or groups, as communities or nations, fall short of what we were intended to be as men and women created in the image of God.”

John Paul’s remarks during the presidency of George H.W. Bush were less abstract. Speaking at the beginning of Bush’s ground war in the Persian Gulf, the pontiff called the conflict “the seed of death.” He urged a crowd of 20,000 people in St. Peter’s Square to pray for the war to end.

John Paul had a similar message for Bush’s son, President George W. Bush. When the two met at the Vatican in 2004, at the start of the Iraq War, the pope urged for “a speedy return of Iraq’s sovereignty.”

Referencing the recent revelations of U.S. torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the 84-year-old pontiff noted that “deplorable events have come to light which have troubled the civic and religious conscience of all.”

With other presidents and pontiffs there were disagreements over abortion rights.

But maybe the most tense president-pope relationship was that of President Donald Trump and Pope Francis. Even before Trump was elected, Francis had some strong words about the real estate mogul, saying in February 2016: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

The two met in May 2017 at the Vatican against a backdrop of divergent views on climate change and immigration. There, during an overall dour and awkward meeting, Francis presented Trump with a pointed gift: a signed copy of “Laudato Si” — the pontiff’s 192-page work for joint efforts from the scientific and religious communities to combat climate change.

At the time, Trump was considering pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.

Unlike Trump, Biden and Francis appear to agree on the need for climate action. But their meeting came amid challenges for both leaders. Some U.S. Catholic Bishops have said Biden, though a Catholic, should not receive Communion because of his liberal stance on abortion rights. The Vatican has warned the bishops to back down, but the issue remains a divisive problem for the leader of the Catholic Church.

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Credits

Editing by Reem Akkad. Photo editing by Chloe Coleman. Video editing by Luis Velarde.