U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden stopped at the Vatican on his way back to the United States from his surprise visit in Iraq, to meet Pope Francis and share the stage with him as they both gave a speech at the Vatican sponsored by the Third International Regenerative Medicine Conference. The conference highlighted the research being done with adult stem cells (as opposed to using fetal tissue).
Mr. Biden used his speech to appeal for all religions to see defeating cancer as a means to express values of faith, love and hope, saying that cancer is a “constant emergency.”
“Cancer’s not a national problem,” he added, “it’s an international problem. It’s a human problem. It affects all races, all religions.”
Mr. Biden, though a Roman Catholic, approves of abortion rights and gay marriage, which has often placed him at odds with church leaders. The Obama administration continues to fund fetal tissue research, which is opposed by Catholics and others who oppose abortion.
Mr. Biden lost his son Beau to cancer in 2015, so meeting the pope in the context of a conference on cancer was especially significant to him, and he thanked the pope for meeting him and his family in Philadelphia soon after losing his son.
“He asked if he would meet with my family — we had just lost my son,” Mr. Biden said. “And he met with my extended family in the hangar behind where the aircraft was. And I wish every grieving parent, brother, sister, mother, father, would have the benefit of his words, his prayers, his presence. He provided us with more comfort than even he, I think, will understand.”
Mr. Biden met with Pope Francis directly after his speech in a brief private audience just before Pope Francis addressed the conference. Mr. Biden has met two previous popes: John Paul II and Benedict XVI. But his fondness for Pope Francis is obvious, meeting and traveling with him throughout much of his American visit last year
Pope Francis, told the conference that the “globalization of indifference must be countered by the globalization of empathy.”
After his meeting with the pope, Mr. Biden, as usual for foreign dignitaries and diplomats, Biden met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state to discuss the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and the need for a negotiated solution to the war in Syria.
“All the world wondered…” including the American Vice-president.