CNA Staff, Dec 19, 2024 / 19:45 pm

U.S. President Joe Biden accepted an invitation to visit Pope Francis next month and discuss efforts to advance peace, the White House announced on Thursday.

Biden, the country’s second Catholic president, is set to travel to Rome from Jan. 9–12 at Pope Francis’ invitation. His audience with Pope Francis is set for Jan. 10 and will focus on efforts to advance peace around the world.

The trip announcement came following a Thursday telephone conversation between Pope Francis and Biden, during which the two leaders discussed “efforts to advance peace around the world during the holiday season,” according to a Dec. 19 statement from the White House.

“The president thanked the pope for his continued advocacy to alleviate global suffering, including his work to advance human rights and protect religious freedoms,” the statement read. “President Biden also graciously accepted His Holiness Pope Francis’ invitation to visit the Vatican next month.”

Biden is also set to meet with Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, and Prime Minister of Italy Giorgia Meloni during his visit. The White House noted that Biden will thank Meloni for her leadership of the G7 over the past year. The G7 Summit is an annual meeting of government leaders from the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and Italy.

Overseas visits this late in a U.S. presidency are rare. The most recent overseas visit in the last month of a president’s term was more than 30 years ago, when outgoing president George H.W. Bush visited Moscow to sign a nuclear treaty and Paris for talks with the French president about the Bosnian war.

Biden last met with Pope Francis in June of this year where the two discussed foreign policy in Israel, Gaza, and the Ukraine as well as climate change. During a private audience at the G7 Summit in Apulia, Italy, the two leaders “emphasized the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire and a hostage deal” in Gaza and the need to “address the critical humanitarian crisis,” according to the White House.

At the time, Biden also thanked Pope Francis for the Vatican’s work to address the humanitarian concerns in Ukraine and for his efforts to address climate change.

The two have consistently discussed the Israel-Hamas war since October 2023, when they spoke over the phone about preventing escalation and working toward peace in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in which Hamas killed more than 1,200 men, women, and children.

Biden previously met with Pope Francis in October 2021 for about 75 minutes to discuss poverty, climate change, and other issues. That was Biden’s first in-person meeting with the pontiff as president, but the two leaders also spoke on the phone shortly after the presidential election. Biden had met Pope Francis three times before becoming president.

Pope Francis has criticized Biden in the past for his promotion of legal abortion as a Catholic, calling it an “incoherence” in a 2022 interview. Pope Francis said: “Let [Biden] talk to his pastor about that incoherence.”

The Holy Father also recently called for an end to production and use of anti-personnel explosives in November, just a week after Biden approved Ukraine’s use of American land mines in the Russia-Ukraine war.

During the past four years of Biden’s administration, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been consistently at odds with the Biden administration over issues related to abortion and gender ideology.