Obama Delivers Letter From Senator Kennedy to the Pope

So what did President Obama and Pope Benedict XVI talk about today at the Vatican? We’ve gotten debriefs of the meeting from both the Vatican and the White House. The two met one-on-one for about 25 minutes. Among the leading topics: stem cell research and abortion. According to both the Vatican and the White House, Obama told the pope that he’s committed to reducing the number of abortions within the United States—a key point that Obama has repeated on the campaign trail and now a president. Did anything the pope say change Obama’s mind. White House aides say no. “At the end of the day, it may just be that there's issues that they can't come to agreement on, but I think he believes…that you can disagree without being disagreeable, Obama adviser Denis McDonough told reporters on Air Force One.

According to the White House, the two also talked a lot about foreign policy, including Cuba, Honduras and the situation in the Middle East. According to the WH, the two talked at length about “interfaith dialogue” and their shared interest in reaching out to the Muslim world in hopes of countering extremism. Finally, they talked about ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy, who is suffering from brain cancer. Obama delivered a letter to the pope from Kennedy and asked the pontiff to pray for him. (Later, according to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Obama called Kennedy from Air Force One to let him know he’d given his letter to the pope.) By the way, the Obama girls were on site—as was Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson—and they too met the pope, but by the time the cameras were allowed back into the room, they were gone.