Google – AFP, Stephen Collinson (AFP), 21 January 2014
 |
President
Barack Obama plans to travel to the Vatican City in March (AFP,
Kirill
Kudryavtsev)
|
Washington
— President Barack Obama will visit Vatican City in March to meet Pope Francis,
whom he has praised as an "eloquent" spokesman on the scourge of
inequality -- a key issue in his own political agenda.
The White
House said Obama would travel to see the pontiff on March 27, following stops
in the Netherlands for a nuclear security summit and talks with European Union
leaders in Brussels.
"The
President looks forward to discussing with Pope Francis their shared commitment
to fighting poverty and growing inequality," the White House said in a
statement Tuesday.
 |
A picture
released by the Vatican press
office shows Pope Francis welcomed by
immigrant
and homeless people in
Rome on January 19, 2014 (AFP/File,
Osservatore Romano)
|
A meeting
between Obama and the pontiff, who has refashioned the image of the Roman
Catholic Church since his installation last year, has long been rumored
following the president's approving comments about Francis.
In a speech
in December, Obama praised an argument advanced by Pope Francis, the first
non-European pontiff in nearly 1,300 years, on rising inequality in societies
split between the very poor and the super rich.
Obama
referred to the pontiff's remarks in his first Apostolic Exhortation as part of
his own prolonged meditation on poverty in a speech on inequality and politics
in America.
"The
pope, himself, spoke about this at eloquent length," Obama said at the
time.
"How
could it be, he wrote, that it's not a news item when an elderly homeless
person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two
points?"
Pope
Francis argued in the exhortation, that such conflicted values marked a
"case of exclusion" in an unequal society and wrote that "masses
of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without
possibilities, without any means of escape."
It was not
the first time Obama had praised Pope Francis, who was elected last March and
has caused a stir with his austere style and pronouncements on poverty.
In October,
the president told CNBC that he was "hugely impressed" with the
pope's humility and empathy to the poor.
Pope
Francis has attracted wide news coverage and interest in the United States and
was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2013.
Obama was
last in Vatican City in 2009, when he met Pope Benedict.
Secretary
of State John Kerry first raised the prospect of a presidential visit to the
Vatican when he met Francis earlier this month.
Obama has
made rising inequality and the struggles of America's middle classes the
signature domestic issue of his second term.
The theme
is likely to underpin his State of the Union address next week.
The president's
trip to the Netherlands, for the nuclear security summit in the Hague, did not
come as a surprise, as the event is his brainchild.
He has been
the leading figure in the previous two nuclear security summits in Washington
DC and Seoul.
The White
House statement said the meeting would "highlight progress made to secure
nuclear materials and commit to future steps to prevent nuclear
terrorism."
Obama will
also meet Dutch officials during his trip.
European
Union sources first said last week that the president would also attend an
EU-US summit in Brussels.
His visit,
his first to EU institutions as president, will be seen as an effort to mend
relations with Europe, following revelations by Edward Snowden about National
Security Agency spying which soured relations with Washington.
The
president will also be keen to push talks on a Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP) designed to create the world's largest free trade
area.
Obama will
also meet Belgian government officials and NATO's top brass.
The
European tour will take place between March 24-27.
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