
As President Joe Biden embarks on only his second overseas trip, he started with a personally poignant audience with Pope Francis on Friday, the first time in more than half a century that a Roman Catholic U.S. leader has met at the Vatican with the head of the Catholic Church.
Biden, the nation’s second Catholic president, was scheduled to be with the Pontiff for only an hour but got 30 minutes of extra time. In 2017, Francis met then President DonaldTrump for 30 minutes and, in 2014, Francis met with then President Barack Obama for 52 minutes.