Obama Arrives in Italy for Meeting With Pope
Source: AP posted on ABC News
ROME March 26, 2014 (AP)
By JULIE PACE AP White House Correspondent
Associated Press
President Barack Obama is opening a visit to Italy, where he'll meet with Pope Francis and Italian political leaders.
Obama arrived in Rome Wednesday night following three days of talks on Ukraine with European leaders in the Netherlands and Brussels.
Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Obama has been inspired by the pope and the way he has motivated people around the world with his messages of inclusion and equality. Rhodes said Obama planned to express his appreciation for the pope's leadership.
The president will depart Italy on Friday for Saudi Arabia, his final stop on a weeklong overseas trip.
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/obama-arrives-italy-meeting-pope-23071951
not too many pics up yet but there's this on the Vatican Radio website :
US President Barack Obama’s trip to Rome on March 27 will be his first audience with Pope Francis.
It will be the second time that President Barack Obama has been received at the Vatican, after an audience with Pope Benedict XVI on July 10, 2009.
Barack Obama is the ninth US President to make an official visit to the Vatican. The first, Woodrow Wilson, received by Pope Benedict XV after the end of the First World War.
(snip)
President Obama’s first meeting with a Pope occurred in he visited Rome in 2009. His upcoming audience with Pope Francis will take place in the context of a complex phase of the administration's relations with the Church of the United States, marked, in particular, by controversy on the implementation of health care reform (the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” commonly known as “Obamacare”) having to do with rules on mandatory health care coverage of sterilization, contraception, and abortion; and on other issues at the centre of public debate in the United States, such as the legalization of homosexual marriages.
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2014/03/26/pope_francis_to_meet_with_president_obama_on_thursday/en1-784960
= new reply since forum marked as read
Eric J. Lyman, Special for USA TODAY 9:30 a.m. EDT March 26, 2014
(snip)
Obama will meet Pope Francis in Vatican City on Thursday with an eye toward making progress in areas of shared interest, analysts say. He is also supposed to meet with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and new Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
This is not Obama's first visit to the Vatican. He met with Pope Benedict XVI in July 2009, a visit Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi characterized as one marked by "great serenity and great cordiality."
Although the Vatican's chief justice said this week that Obama's polices are increasingly hostile toward Christians, experts say the agenda with Francis will include discussions about conflicts they largely agree on such as the Middle East, global poverty, immigration, economic inequality and also Ukraine.
. . .
The two are not expected to talk about the prickly topic of exclusions from providing some health services by religious hospitals under Obama's signature Affordable Health Care Act, though the topic could come up in planned talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterpart at the Vatican, Archbishop Pietro Parolin.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/26/obama-pope-vatican/6874965/
...........................
They are going to talk about the ACA , directly or otherwise, trust me on this one. 
photo link: http://news.yahoo.com/both-self-styled-uniters--pope-francis-and-president-obama-remain-deeply-divided-162848416.html
President Obama and Michelle Obama meet Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in 2009.
by SYLVIA POGGIOLI
March 26, 2014 2:35 PM
President Obama meets Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday, the 30th anniversary of formal relations between Washington and the Holy See, and against a backdrop of a sometimes turbulent history in U.S.-Vatican ties.
President John F. Kennedy, who was Roman Catholic, during an audience with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in July 1963. Some of Kennedy's critics questioned whether he would take orders from the Vatican.
(snip)
The Clinton administration clashed openly with the Vatican over population control and abortion. And Pope John Paul II vehemently opposed the two U.S.-led wars against Iraq.
More recently, Franco says, the Vatican was dismayed by Washington's backing of the so-called Arab spring. In Egypt, Syria and elsewhere, "the Vatican was an objective ally to lay dictatorships, because they protected Christian minorities because they were lay, they were not [Islamic] fundamentalists," Franco says.
(snip)
Obama and Pope Francis are likely to discuss a range of international issues — Ukraine, Syria, the Cuba embargo, the plight of minority Christians and perhaps immigration.
(snip)
While the president and Francis share a commitment to fighting inequality, the pope has often denounced laissez-faire capitalism and the ills of globalization.
(snip)
Francis may be surprised to learn how much the president knows about Catholicism. Not only was Obama an organizer in a Catholic-run community association in Chicago, when he lived in Indonesia as a boy, he studied at a school in Jakarta named St. Francis of Assisi.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/03/26/294320752/the-sometimes-tricky-relations-between-popes-and-presidents
leave now but marking this for when I return.
happened to catch it on NPR, just one of those things, but I gotta say there's no better month to visit Rome than March. Except maybe October. But March is magical, glorious, amazing. Hope he gets some sight-see time!
later~
Atten-hut!
Forward!
I would make sure to order some awesome Italian Spaghetti dinner with some nice vino to go with. The Best part of visiting Italy has got to be the food!
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VIDEO: @AmbasciataUSA has been busy preparing for the President's visit to Rome. Check it out:
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And, this arrival pic..
President Obama is greeted by Archbishop Francesco Canalini and Monsignor Jose Avelino Battencourt (L) as he arrives in Rome
TOD
And the one on the right is a dead ringer for the wizard of oz isn't he? 
I think PBO is going to have a great time. Looks like they cant wait to show him around!
real spaghetti Italiano! 
http://www.johnmariani.com/archive/2010/111205/index.html
Not sure if that's photoshopped? 
lol
up.. I use to work in Italian Restaurants a long time ago and served plenty of plain ol spumoni. 
thought the Pres would be too pooped to Pope. 
for these 8 years, we may realize this more over time!
