Biden: Pope told me that I should 'keep receiving Communion'
"The tradition is, and I’m only kidding about this, but next time I see you, if you don’t have it, you have to buy the drinks," Biden said, referring to the coin. He added: “I’m the only Irishman you’ve ever met who's never had a drink.”
Francis laughed and responded: “The Irish brought whiskey.”
Biden, 78, also relayed the story of American baseball player Satchel Paige, a Black pitcher who played late into his fifties, in a parable about aging. “'How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?" Biden quoted Paige as saying. "You’re 65, I’m 60,” Biden added, as Francis, 84, pointed to his head and laughed.
Francis presented Biden with a ceramic tile depicting the iconography of the pilgrim, as well as a collection of the pope’s main teaching documents, the Vatican said. In the Vatican video, he could be heard asking Jill Biden to “pray for me.”
The warm encounter stood in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s 2017 meeting with Francis, with whom the former president had a prickly relationship. Photos from that 30-minute meeting showed a stone-faced Francis standing beside a grinning Trump. Biden's meeting also was longer than the 52 minutes Barack Obama spent with Francis in 2014.
Biden is visiting Rome and then Glasgow for back-to-back summits, first a gathering for leaders of the Group of 20 leading and developing nations and then a global climate conference.
Biden and Francis have previously met three times, but Friday's encounter was their first since Biden became president.
Biden also met separately Friday with G-20 summit hosts Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. He ended the day with French President Emmanuel Macron, trying anew to smooth relations after the U.S. and U.K. decided to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, scotching a lucrative French contract in the process.
Biden’s meeting with Pope Francis generated some controversy in advance as the Vatican on Thursday abruptly canceled plans to broadcast the meeting with Biden live and denied independent press access. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the revised television plan reflected the virus protocol for all heads of state audiences, though he didn’t say why more robust live TV coverage had been initially scheduled and then canceled.
The Vatican instead provided edited footage of the encounter to accredited media.
The Vatican spokesman declined to comment on Biden’s remarks about Communion, noting that the Vatican doesn’t comment on the pope’s private conversations beyond what is written in the official communique, which made no mention of the issue.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement after the Vatican meeting that didn't address Biden’s remark about Communion. Instead, the statement suggested that the president would not be singled out in any document emerging from the bishops’ meeting next month.
The document “is intended to speak to the beauty of meeting Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and is addressed to all Catholics,” the statement said.
There was no immediate response to queries sent by The Associated Press to seven bishops engaged in the debate.
Francis has stressed that he will not reject political leaders who support abortion rights, though Catholic policy allows individual bishops to choose whether to prevent people from taking Communion.