Popes and POTUS, by Brad Miner

By Brad Miner, The Catholic Thing, Jan. 14, 2025

Brad Miner, husband and father, is Senior Editor of The Catholic Thing and a Senior Fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute. He is a former Literary Editor of National Review, and had a long career in the book publishing industry. …

Before he leaves office, Joe Biden will not be meeting with Pope Francis as planned. The Los Angeles wildfires put an end to that – or so we’re told. But the original plan got me curious about such meetings and what they mean. It’s a complex but, at least sometimes, significant history.

If you were to do an Internet search, you’d likely read that the first president to visit a pope was Woodrow Wilson in 1919. That’s not true, not even close, unless you add the modifier sitting. Then, yes, Wilson, who was in Europe after World War I for the Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920), was the first “current occupant of the White House” to visit the Apostolic Palace. …

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