michael, hang with us. also with us, keir simmons, he's in rome. and father thomas reesenior analyst for religious news service. thomas, tell us about the meeting with the president and the pope. joe biden is a catholic. this must have been quite an honor. >> reporter: that's right, steph. it's significant that the second catholic president in u.s. history having a meeting with the pope today, but we're seeing nothing like what we saw in terms of the personal relationship that already existed between president biden and pope francis that predated this meeting. when president biden came here, he came for the pope's inauguration. he spent a significant amount of time when he came to the u.s. in 2015. also traveled back to the vatican. i was with him when he spoke at kuhn frens on cancer cures here in 2016. we know they've stayed in touch since then. that deep relationship was really on display in some of the pictures we saw and the conversations we heard. the president sat down with pope francis for 90 minutes according to the timeline given to the white house. that's three