President Joe Biden praised Pope Benedict XVI as a theologian and an inspiration in his first public comments following the death of the former pontiff at age 95.
Benedict “will be remembered as a renowned theologian, with a lifetime of devotion to the Church, guided by his principles and faith,” Biden said in a statement provided by the White House Saturday.
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Biden, the second Catholic president, said that he and first lady Jill Biden were morning the death of the pope emeritus.
Biden noted that he met with Benedict in 2011 and said that the pope was generous and welcoming.
“May his focus on the ministry of charity continue to be an inspiration to us all,” Biden said.
Benedict was asked about Biden’s apparent contradiction between his professed Catholic faith and his position on abortion, something conservative Catholics frequently decry, in a 2021 interview. Benedict responded that he considers Biden an observant Catholic but is concerned with his views on abortion, refusing to outright condemn the president.
“It’s true, he’s Catholic and observant. And personally, he is against abortion,” Benedict said, Crux reported. “But as president, he tends to present himself in continuity with the line of the Democratic Party….and on gender policy, we still don’t really understand what his position is.”
When the two met in 2011, the meeting was seen as surprising, as it didn’t appear on the schedules of the then-vice president or pope. The Vatican took little note of the meeting, something noted as unusual by Time, as it contrasted heavily with a meeting with the Catholic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2009. In that meeting, the Papacy publicly announced that the Pope had given the abortion-supporting Pelosi a lecture about the Church’s teaching on abortion. Biden apparently received no such lecture.
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Benedict’s body will lie in state starting Monday, the Vatican press office said, and Pope Francis will provide over his funeral Thursday at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. It is not yet known which representatives of the U.S. will be present.
