The audience will be the first meeting of the two since Biden’s election as President (though they spent time together when Biden was Vice-President), and it will be scrutinized both for its substance and its symbolism. On Friday, Francis will greet a very different guest: President Joe Biden, who will be in Rome for a summit of leaders of the G-20 nations-a highly unspontaneous exercise in international diplomacy. The episode, Francis later said, showed the kind of freedom commended in Scripture-the freedom to act “from the heart,” the way that children do.
After a couple of minutes, he was given his own zucchetto, and left the stage, to applause.
Paolo pointed to the zucchetto, the Pope’s white skullcap, and sat in a chair that one of the clerics vacated for him. Francis smiled at him as a scriptural text was read aloud. The child, named Paolo, clambered onto the stage in the Audience Hall, where Pope Francis was seated with a cleric on either side. At the Vatican last Wednesday, the general audience-a weekly ritual in which the Pope speaks and leads prayers for several thousand pilgrims and dignitaries-was spontaneously taken over by a ten-year-old boy in a sweatsuit and running shoes.