Biden to Meet With Pope Francis at G7 Summit in Italy

Given that it’s an election year, a meeting with the Pope may have special significance for President Joe Biden at the summit.

PUGLIA, Italy—The second day of the Group of Seven (G7) summit in southern Italy began on June 14 with back-to-back meetings of world leaders, featuring discussions about artificial intelligence (AI), climate change, China, and the Middle East.

Following these sessions, President Joe Biden will meet with Pope Francis privately on the sidelines of the summit.

President Biden and Pope Francis last met in October 2021 at the Vatican, where the president offered the Pope a “command coin” and praised him as “the most significant warrior for peace I’ve ever met.”

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President Biden is the second Catholic U.S. president, after President John F. Kennedy.

Given the election year, a meeting with the Pope may have special significance for President Biden at the summit.

In February 2021, then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the president had an excellent relationship with the pope. She said there is a picture in the Oval Office “that is a reflection of that.”

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It has become increasingly common for U.S. presidents to meet and shake hands with popes since 1959, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower met with Pope John XXIII at the Vatican, John Gizzi, a political columnist at Newsmax who has written on Catholics and the Vatican, told The Epoch Times.

In 2020, the AP VoteCast survey estimated that 49 percent of Catholics nationwide supported Joe Biden in the 2020 election, while 50 percent backed then-President Donald Trump.

In recent polls, a majority of Catholics have preferred former President Trump to President Biden. According to a Pew Research study released in April, 55 percent of Catholics said they would vote for the former president, while 43 percent support President Biden. The gap is greater among white, non-Hispanic voters.

However, among Hispanic voters, the picture is quite different. They prefer President Biden over former President Trump by 49 to 47 percent.

Voting Trends

Ernesto Castaneda, a sociology professor and director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University, said he believes that the majority of Latino voters will cast their ballots for Democrats in the upcoming election, but at a lesser rate than in prior elections.

“Like white voters, Latinos are a diverse population and vote differently depending on their education, profession, gender, and place of residence,” he told The Epoch Times.

However, President Biden’s meeting with the Pope is significant and may remind voters that he has always been a Catholic, he noted.