Obama to Meet Pope for the First Time

L’AQUILA, Italy — President Obama, a former Catholic school student who says his thinking in some ways has been profoundly influenced by the church, plans to visit Pope Benedict XVI on Friday afternoon to wrap up three days of meetings with world leaders here.

Mr. Obama and the pope make for an interesting pair, sharing a vision about social justice but profoundly disagreeing on issues like abortion, embryonic stem cell research, gay rights and the death penalty. White House aides predicted that the two ultimately would not let their differences cloud their common ground.

“There are issues on which they’ll agree, issues on which they’ll disagree, and issues on which they’ll agree to continue to work on going forward,” said Denis McDonough, the president’s deputy national security adviser.

The audience at the Vatican will cap a long stretch of discussions with fellow leaders here in this central Italian city about the stubbornly anemic global economy, the challenges of climate change, the turmoil in Iran and a host of other topics. Mr. Obama and the other leaders of the Group of 8 gathered here plan to unveil a $15 billion investment fund Friday to help farmers in the developing world do a better job of growing crops.

The leaders started their morning with a breakfast with counterparts from Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa, who sought a commitment from the rich nations to live up to their past pledges of doubling development assistance. The United States, under President George W. Bush and now Mr. Obama, has poured more money into development aid, but Italy and France have not fulfilled their vows.

The meetings led to a moment Thursday night where Mr. Obama encountered Libya’s leader Moammar Qaddafi, once an implacable enemy of the United States who turned around and made peace during the Bush administration and gave up his nation’s secret nuclear weapons program. Mr. Obama and Mr. Qaddafi shook hands and exchanged some words.

Mr. Obama will end his day here by flying to Ghana for a one-day visit, his first to sub-Saharan Africa since becoming America’s first black president and presumably the most potent symbolic moment of his week-long overseas journey.

Michelle Obama and their daughters, Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, who have been staying a two-hour drive away in Rome while the president stays in a dormitory here will join him at the Vatican City to meet the pope at the end of their talks.

Mr. Obama attended a Catholic school as a boy growing up in Indonesia and as a young man worked as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago for a group partly funded by the church. He has talked of the church’s social teaching and how it helped him shape his own views.

“The president often refers to the fundamental belief that each person is endowed with dignity,” said Mr. McDonough. “The president often underscores that dignity of people is a driving goal in what we hope to accomplish in development policy, for example, and in foreign policy.”

The two likely will talk about the pope’s latest encyclical, issued earlier this week, that called for “greater social responsibility” on the part of business and urged financiers to “rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity.” Mr. Obama said earlier this week that he looked forward to talking about that with the pontiff.

Mr. Obama’s predecessor, Mr. Bush, forged good relations with the two popes he overlapped with in part through agreement on issues like abortion. Mr. Obama’s commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame this spring drew protests from some Catholics who objected to giving a platform at a Catholic institution to a prominent supporter of abortion rights.

Some Catholics also complained about Mr. Obama’s appointment of Henry Knox, an official of the Human Rights Campaign, to a White House advisory council on faith-based initiatives, because Mr. Knox had harshly criticized the pope and church for opposing same-sex marriage. Mr. Knox was quoted calling the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service group, “foot soldiers of a discredited army of oppression” following “discredited leaders” like the pope during the California referendum on gay marriage.

Mr. Obama, a Protestant who quit his longtime Chicago church after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary comments threatened to unravel his presidential campaign, has yet to settle on a new church in Washington.

By PETER BAKER, nytimes.com