https://religionnews.com/2020/11/07/president-elect-joe-bidens-public-catholicism-is-complicated-and-deeply-american-jfk/
A version of this article originally ran in August 2020. It has been updated to reflect that Biden is now the president-elect.
WASHINGTON (RNS) — In spring of1980, Pope John Paul II had one of the longest meetings of his fledgling papacy. It wasn’t with a world leader, a U.S. president or even a secretary of state. It was with a 37-year-old Joe Biden, a U.S. senator barely a year into his second term.
According to a Catholic News Service account of the encounter, the pope shooed away Vatican aides several times when they attempted to interrupt the 45-minute conversation. After waving them out of the room, John Paul pulled his chair out from behind his desk to sit closer to Biden.
The pontiff ribbed the senator about his age as the two discussed everything from the politics of Eastern Europe to the spread of communism in Latin America. Biden, a Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania coal country with an interest in foreign policy, listened intently.
But despite the thrill of meeting John Paul, there was one thing Biden refused to do: kiss the pope’s ring, a customary greeting when meeting an esteemed cleric. It was later revealed that it was Biden’s mother who insisted he refrain, telling her son, “Don’t you kiss his ring.”
His refusal is a glimpse of how the president-elect, who has spent decades in the U.S. Senate and the White House, might approach his own power as he finally takes hold of an office he has sought since 1988. The moment in Rome is also a hallmark of how the president-elect’s manages his faith: a throwback brand of political Catholicism that eschews obsessive obedience to the Holy See on matters of policy.