Face-to-face with the Pope, face-to-face with Macron: Joe Biden in Rome as the G20 curtain raiser

Published on : 10/29/2021 – 8:13 AM

The meeting promises to be “warm” with the Pope, a little less with Emmanuel Macron: Joe Biden is in Rome, Friday, October 29, as a driver before the G20 summit, and after having promised a “historic” plan for the American economy.

The US president landed around 2:25 am local time (12:25 am GMT) in Italy. After weeks of tortuous negotiations and disappointments in Washington, with a sinking confidence rating, Joe Biden would like during his European stay – in the wake of the G20 in Rome, he will go to Glasgow for the great COP26 conference on the climate – take a little height, he who sees himself as the spokesperson for democracies in the face of authoritarian regimes, with China in the lead.

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However, he will begin his journey on a more intimate note. Joe Biden is going to the Vatican on Friday to meet Pope Francis for the fourth time in his life, but for the first time as President of the United States – he is the second Catholic ever elected to this post.

The White House expects this interview, which will also be attended by First Lady Jill Biden, to be “warm”, according to its spokesperson Jen Psaki.

Joe Biden hardly ever misses mass and often speaks of the comfort found in faith in the face of a series of mourning – the accidental death of his first wife and their still-baby daughter, then that of his son Beau, of cancer.

Officially, the president and the pope will discuss their common concerns on Friday: poverty, climate change and the pandemic. But the two men, whose meeting will be held far from the eyes and ears of journalists, will they also address the much less consensual issue of the right to abortion?

Joe Biden firmly defends it, the Pope considers that the voluntary termination of pregnancy is “a murder”. But the sovereign pontiff has distanced himself from the American bishops, who would like to ban communion to politicians supporting the right to abortion.

Interview with Mario Draghi

Joe Biden must then meet with the head of the Italian government Mario Draghi. Host of the G20 summit, the former head of the European Central Bank is arousing much interest in the United States and elsewhere with his forced reform projects.

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Some commentators paint Mario Draghi, past the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the American bank Goldman Sachs, familiar names for American elites, as the new star of the European political scene.

The G20 is to be held on Saturday and Sunday. Chinese President Xi Jinping will finally participate in the summit via video, according to a notice from the Chinese Foreign Ministry released on Friday. Xi Jinping, who has not left China since the start of 2020 and the onset of the coronavirus epidemic, will make a speech at the summit, said the opinion.

Other leaders of the G20 countries, like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, will not be visiting Rome.

Showing a break with the Trump era

For his part, Joe Biden, will have to show, at the G20 as at the COP26, that he has not only broken with the verbal excesses of Donald Trump, but also with the temptations of withdrawal and unilateralism. Recently, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August confused US allies.

Joe Biden will undoubtedly extensively praise his reforms, he who promises “the biggest investment ever made to face a climate crisis”: 550 billion dollars to cut in the emissions of greenhouse gases.

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But its international partners have seen it bogged down in parliamentary procedure, which is not complete. They noted that Joe Biden had to halve his social spending pledges – which remain, at $ 1.7 trillion, gargantuan.

The American president, who happily recalls having traveled the world as a senator and then vice-president, wants to rekindle the flame with his allies. Starting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The two men are due to meet in Rome on Friday – time and place are not yet known – to seal their reconciliation, after a very serious diplomatic crisis over a contract for Australian submarines, which the United States has blown to the France.

With AFP and Reuters