Pope Benedict to receive Obama at the Vatican on Friday

Jul 10, 2009, 8:41 GMT

Vatican City - Pope Benedict XVI planned Friday to receive US President Barack Obama at the Vatican, in a meeting in which they were expected to discuss issues on which they have both professed concern - global poverty and the environment.

Obama was scheduled to arrive in Rome in the afternoon after attending, with leaders of advanced and emerging nations, the final day of a Group of Eight (G8) summit in the central Italian city of L'Aquila.

The meeting scheduled for 1415 GMT, marks the first between Obama, a Protestant Christian, and the spiritual leader of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.

On Tuesday on the eve of the G8 summit, the Vatican published Benedict's new social encyclical - a major teaching on the need to base globalisation on God-centred ethical principles.

Through the timing of encyclical's release, the pontiff appeared to send a message to Obama and other summit participants - a message in many ways in tune with some of the economic and energy reforms promoted by Obama since he took office.

In the document, Benedict outlined, among other things, the need for a redistribution of the world's wealth in a way that favours the development of poor nations, the promotion of workers' rights and measures to safeguard the environment.

Benedict also called for the creation of a 'world authority' to manage the global economy and prevent market speculation of the sort that triggered the current financial crisis.

But he also reiterated the church's stance on the need to protect the 'dignity of life' in all its forms - a position at odds with Obama's support for abortion rights and stem cell research using human embryos.

Citing Obama's views on such issues, many US Catholic bishops earlier this year condemned a decision by the Catholic University of Notre Dame to award a honorary degree to the US President.

To date the Vatican has adopted milder tones towards the White House, to the extent that its newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, drew criticism from several prominent conservative US Catholics for what they saw as a too glowing appraisal of Obama's first 100 days in office.