Anonymous ID: 60e273 Oct. 31, 2021, 8:40 a.m. No.14893103   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3112

>>14893081

>JB gives Pope challenge coin of Beau

 

Biden said the coin he handed Francis included insignia of the 261st Signal Brigade unit in the Delaware Army National Guard, the unit in which the President's son, Beau Biden, served as a captain.

"With your permission I'd like to be able to give you a coin. It has a US seal on the front, but what's different with this coin, usually – I know my son would want me to give this to you because on the back of it I have the state of Delaware and the 261st unit my son served on," Biden said, handing the Pope the large gold coin.

Beau Biden died in 2015 at the age of 46 from brain cancer. The President saw the Pope in the following months, and has warmly recalled when Francis gathered with Biden's extended family, who were still grieving, as he departed from the Philadelphia International Airport on his way out of the US. Biden has also said he corresponded with the Pope following Beau's death.

The President said during Friday's Vatican visit that the coins are given to "warriors and leaders," adding, "You are the most significant warrior for peace I've ever met."

"Now the tradition is I'm only kidding about this the next time I see you, if you don't have it you have to buy the drinks. I'm the only Irishman you've ever met who's never had a drink," Biden said to the Pope, who was laughing.

Francis quipped that "Irish people love whiskey."

The President also gave Francis a handwoven vestment from the 1930s that came from the archival collection of Biden's Washington, DC, parish, Holy Trinity Church.

The garment is a "handwoven fiddleback chasuble" that "was commissioned by Gammarelli of Rome in 1930 and has since been utilized by the Society of Jesus in the United States," according to a White House official. The chasuble was framed by artisans in Washington, DC, with "naturally fallen wood from the White House grounds" and historic marble reclaimed from the original pulpit of the church.