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> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/world/europe/joe-biden-speaks-about-faith-and-curing-cancer-at-the-vatican.html?_r=0 <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/world/europe/joe-biden-speaks-about-faith-and-curing-cancer-at-the-vatican.html?_r=0>
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> Joe Biden Speaks About Faith and Curing Cancer at the Vatican
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> Pope Francis with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at the Vatican on Friday. L'Osservatore Romano, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
> VATICAN CITY — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/joseph_r_jr_biden/index.html?inline=nyt-per> came to this tiny city-state to talk about two of his favorite things — curing cancer and his Roman Catholic faith.
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> At the Third International Regenerative Medicine Conference at the Vatican <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_catholic_church/index.html?inline=nyt-org>, Mr. Biden spoke about the urgent need to come up with new cures for cancer — a subject that has come to define his final year in office.
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> The conference is intended to highlight the extraordinary research advances being made with adult stem cells <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/stemcells/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> while largely sidestepping the issue of research using fetal tissue or embryonic stem cells.
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> “Most importantly, we want everyone to understand that no one has to choose between science and faith,” Dr. Robin Smith, president of the Stem for Life Foundation <http://www.stemforlifefoundation.com/> and one of the three-day conference organizers, said in a welcoming speech Tuesday.
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> It is precisely the sort of delicate dance with faith Mr. Biden has performed his entire life — embracing Catholicism along with abortion rights and gay marriage. The Obama administration, for instance, continues to support funding for fetal tissue research, which is opposed by Catholics and many who oppose abortion.
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> Continue reading the main story
> Mr. Biden focused on issues the two sides agreed on.
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> “The truth is that today, more than at any point in human history, we have a genuine opportunity to help more people all across the world than ever before,” Mr. Biden said Friday in a speech to the conference.
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> Mr. Biden’s Roman Catholic upbringing and Irish heritage are, along with his family, his personal touchstones. He refers to them in many of his speeches and asides. But his political beliefs, including his support for abortion rights and gay marriage, have often put him at odds with Catholic teaching and church leaders.
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> Last month, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind., the diocese near the University of Notre Dame, rebuked the school’s leadership for announcing that it would bestow an award on Mr. Biden at its spring commencement.
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> “We should not honor those who claim to personally accept church teaching, but act contrary to that teaching in their political choices,” the Rev. Rhoades wrote.
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> Mr. Biden has not had to deal with the sort of intense scrutiny that Senator John Kerry faced in 2004 when he ran for president and faced constant speculation about whether Catholic priests would serve him communion. Roman Catholic leaders of Delaware, Mr. Biden’s home state, never threatened to withhold communion from him, although Bishop Michael Saltarelli, then of Wilmington, persuaded the Mr. Biden’s high school alma mater in 2006 not to to name a new student center after him.
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> While fiercely committed to the church, Mr. Biden often has seemed to take pride in defying parts of its hierarchy. His mother, he often has said, taught him never to kiss the pope’s ring. And of those who doubted his faith because of his disagreement with Catholic dogma, he once said, in 2005, “The next Republican that tells me I’m not religious, I’m going to shove my rosary down their throat.”
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> Mr. Biden has met two previous popes — Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. He famously told Pope Benedict XVI to be easier on American nuns <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/us/politics/biden-drawing-on-his-past-expresses-common-cause-with-activist-nuns.html>, the target of a Vatican crackdown for their activism on issues like poverty and health care. But his fondness for Pope Francis <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/francis_i/index.html?inline=nyt-per> is obvious.
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> When Pope Francis visited the United States in September, Mr. Biden along with President Obama and their families met him at the airport. He and his wife, Jill Biden, were in the front row when Pope Francis spoke at the White House. Mr. Biden sat behind the pope when the pontiff delivered his speech to Congress, and Mr. Biden accompanied the pope through much of his six-day sojourn in the United States. Mr. Biden and his entire family then saw Pope Francis off at Philadelphia International Airport.
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> Continue reading the main story
> It was a powerful meeting for Mr. Biden, still grieving over the loss of his son, Beau Biden, to cancer some five months before.
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> In his speech on Friday, Mr. Biden thanked Francis for that meeting in Philadelphia.
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> “He asked if he would meet with my family — we had just lost my son,” Mr. Biden said. “And he met with my extended family in the hangar behind where the aircraft was. And I wish every grieving parent, brother, sister, mother, father, would have the benefit of his words, his prayers, his presence. He provided us with more comfort that even he, I think, will understand.”
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> Pope Francis then addressed the conference, encouraging participants to seek cures for cancers that affect few people and whose treatments might not be profitable, and to fight for access to treatment for all.
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> “This is why the globalization of indifference must be countered by the globalization of empathy,” the pope said.
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> Mr. Biden met with Pope Francis alone. After that meeting, Mr. Biden met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, and traveled to Palazzo Chigi to meet with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy.
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Eric D. Schwerin
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