United States President Joe Biden will meet Pope Francis in the Vatican on Friday, at a time when the American commander in chief is under fire from Church conservatives for his complicated stance on abortion rights.
Biden usually attends weekly Mass and maintains a photograph of the pope beneath his Oval Office desk. He has stated that while he personally opposes abortion, he is unable to impose his beliefs as an elected official.
However, conservative Catholic media outlets and conservative bishops in the United States have chastised him for that stance, with some arguing that the Democratic president should be barred from receiving communion, the faith's basic sacrament.
Simultaneously, abortion rights activists have been appalled by a new Texas law that puts a near-total ban on abortion. The law has been challenged by Biden's administration, and the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the matter next Monday.
It is unknown whether Biden and Pope Francis would debate abortion and communion during their private meeting on Friday, which will be their first since Biden took office in January.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the two leaders would discuss climate change, income inequality and migration.
"It is abundantly evident that the pope does not concur with the president on the issue of abortion. He has made that abundantly obvious," Baltimore Archbishop William Lori told Catholic News Service.
When asked last month about the country's communion dispute, the pope told reporters that abortion is "murder." However, he appeared to criticize the U.S. Catholic bishops for approaching the problem in a political rather than pastoral manner.
"Communion is not a reward for perfection... Communion is a gift, the presence of Jesus and his Church," the pope explained.
Bishops should approach Catholic politicians who support abortion rights with "compassion and gentleness," he urged.
Francis has stated repeatedly since his election as the first Latin American pope in 2013 that while the Church should be against abortion, the issue should not become an all-consuming dispute in culture wars that divert focus away from pressing issues like immigration and poverty.
Jo Renee Formicola, a political science professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, said the encounter could boost Biden in his stalemate with the U.S. bishops over abortion and move the focus to the two men's shared social justice objectives.
