So what did President Obama and Pope Benedict XVI talk about today at the Vatican? We’ve gotten debriefs of the meeting from both the Vatican and the White House. The two met one-on-one for about 25 minutes. Among the leading topics: stem cell research and abortion. According to both the Vatican and the White House, Obama told the pope that he’s committed to reducing the number of abortions within the United States—a key point that Obama has repeated on the campaign trail and now a president. Did anything the pope say change Obama’s mind. White House aides say no. “At the end of the day, it may just be that there's issues that they can't come to agreement on, but I think he believes…that you can disagree without being disagreeable, Obama adviser Denis McDonough told reporters on Air Force One.

According to the White House, the two also talked a lot about foreign policy, including Cuba, Honduras and the situation in the Middle East. According to the WH, the two talked at length about “interfaith dialogue” and their shared interest in reaching out to the Muslim world in hopes of countering extremism. Finally, they talked about ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy, who is suffering from brain cancer. Obama delivered a letter to the pope from Kennedy and asked the pontiff to pray for him. (Later, according to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Obama called Kennedy from Air Force One to let him know he’d given his letter to the pope.) By the way, the Obama girls were on site—as was Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson—and they too met the pope, but by the time the cameras were allowed back into the room, they were gone.

By Aku Ammah-Tagoe
 
The neighbors across the street have been blasting their stereo nonstop. I’m staying with relatives in Accra, Ghana, where President Obama and his family landed earlier tonight. Ghanaians are excited to welcome the American president; everyone is decked out in shirts bearing his face, and even in the endless rain (this is Ghana’s rainy season), vendors walk the streets with racks of commemorative merchandise. But the people across the street are particularly thrilled. For hours, they’ve been playing a song with only one verse: “Barack. Barack. Barack Obama.” And here in Kokomlemle, one of the city’s central neighborhoods, no one seems to mind.

When we talk about the level of Obama’s celebrity, we usually talk about something quantifiable: the 200,000 people who watched him speak in Berlin one year ago, for example, or the almost 70 million votes he received last November. But here in Accra, Obamamania has transcended mere numbers. The president is more than a symbol or a celebrity. He’s become a part of the culture, and, in some ways, an adopted son. That makes sense: Obama is the embodiment of Africa’s promise, one of the brightest stars to emerge from a continent that is largely maligned or ignored. Many Ghanaians view their country the same way, which makes for a perfect match.

Photo courtesy Jason Reed / Reuters-Landov

You may have seen this rather misleading photo doing the rounds this morning. The photo appears to depict President Obama checking out the rear of 16-year-old Brazilian girl Mayora Taveres. We admit that the shot is incriminating, but the real story is far less titillating. If you watch the full video you'll see that Obama was in the midst of an entirely gentlemanly maneuver—he's about to offer his hand to the girl in the floral skirt and black top behind him to help her step done to his level. So, despite the unfortunate timing of this shot, Obama is innocent. Not only that, Obama is proving again that chivalry is not dead. (Rememer how he recently whisked his wife off to New York and Paris for dates?) French President Nicolas Sarkozy on the other hand—well, we'll leave it up to you to determine what he's looking at.

President Obama just wrapped up his visit with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. We’ll have to wait for word later from administration officials on what exactly the two talked about in their private sit-down. And no doubt the Vatican will have its own take. But reporters at the White House press file at the G-8 site in L’Aquila were able to see some of the visit on feed provided by official Vatican TV. Obama first met one-on-one with the pope, where the two exchanged the usual greetings as the president was escorted into Benedict's private apartment. The two leaders then went into the Papal Library, where Obama sat on one side of a very fancy wooden desk and Benedict sat on the other. As dozens of photographers captured the moment for eternity, Obama made small talk. “You must be used to having your picture taken,” the president said. The pope, with a faint smile, nodded. “I’m still getting used to it,” Obama told him. The pope gave him a careful look. “You must be getting tired,” Benedict finally said, referring to Obama’s lengthy foreign sojourn his week. Obama’s response was inaudible.

A few minutes later, Vatican TV suddenly cut to a feed that showed Obama and Benedict standing in a corner of the library, and First Lady Michelle Obama, dressed in a black dress and black lace head veil, had joined them. All three were smiling. There was no sign of the Obama daughters on Vatican TV’s footage, though reporters had been told they would be there. Your Gaggler did get to watch Obama introduce the pope to members of his inner circle, who looked collectively thrilled. Among those on hand: National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Deputy Chief of Staff Mona Sutphen, Senior Adviser David Axelrod, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and NSA adviser Denis McDonough. Upon meeting, Gibbs and McDonough kissed the pope’s hand—though other advisers, including Axelrod, who is Jewish, did not. Obama, Michelle and the aides posed for a group picture with the pontiff. For the record, McDonough, who confessed to reporters earlier this week that he was pretty excited about this event, looked the happiest we’ve ever seen him.

Afterwards, Benedict handed out official papal swag: boxes of blessed Catholic rosaries for the women and medals for the men. He presented the president with a painting of St. Peter's Square and an autographed copy of Caritas in Veritate, his recently-published take on the church's social teachings. (Do you think he meant that as a hint?) Obama, meanwhile, presented the pope with his gift: a stole that had been placed on the remains of St. John Neumann, the first naturalized U.S. citizen to named a saint. The group bid their good-byes, and it was done. The whole thing lasted a little less than an hour. The president is now on his way to Ghana, the final stop on his trip.

One of the real accomplishments here at the G-8 was the announcement that participating countries would contribute $20 billion toward global food security. Administration officials initially estimated they would only get $15 billion in commitments but Obama pushed the issue heavily. At a meeting this morning with the leaders of Nigeria, Libya, Ethiopia and several other African countries, Obama, talked about his own family’s experience with Africa and poverty. “Everyone knows his father is from Kenya, that he still has relatives living in poverty, and that while he’s president of the United States, he feels poverty in a very personal way because of this of his family situation,” a senior administration official told reporters. In part, Obama talked about Kenya’s decline from the days when his father lived there, and it was an economy doing better than South Korea, to now, where family members who remain there struggle. “His cousin in Kenya can’t find a job without paying a bribe,” the official said. The president’s audience was riveted. “You could hear a pin drop,” the aide said.

Obama was asked about the story at the presser today, and in his own words, he explained what he had told other foreign leaders.  “My father traveled to the United States a mere 50 years ago and yet now I have family members who live in villages,” Obama said. “They themselves are not going hungry, but live in villages where hunger is real.  And so this is something that I understand in very personal terms, and if you talk to people on the ground in Africa, certainly in Kenya, they will say that part of the issue here is the institutions aren't working for ordinary people.  And so governance is a vital concern that has to be addressed.”

Obama’s full answer, courtesy the White House is after the jump:

Going before reporters here in Italy, President Obama called his first G-8 summit “highly productive,” even as he conceded that summit leaders didn’t agree on every issue and not every problem was solved. Obama cited “meaningful” progress on issues like climate change and nuclear proliferation and disputed reports that the summit had failed to meet expectations by not issuing sanctions on Iran for the “appalling events” in the wake of last month’s disputed election there.

“This notion that we were trying to get sanctions or that this was a forum in which we could get sanctions is not accurate. What we wanted is exactly what we got—a statement of unity and strong condemnation,” Obama said, noting that the statement was even more important because Russia, a key trading partner of Iran, had signed onto the declaration. “My hope is, is that the Iranian leadership will look at the statement coming out of the G8 and recognize that world opinion is clear.”

The president said the leaders will re-evaluate Iran’s behavior at the upcoming G-20 summit in Pittsburgh in late September. Speaking of that, Obama acknowledged criticism of the summit process and said he had his own beefs with how things work. “There is no doubt we have to update and refresh and renew,” the president said, noting that many of these institutions are simply outdated. He noted that he had attended “a lot of these” during his six months in office and said he supported “streamlining them and making them more effective.” “We need to make sure that they’re as productive as possible,” Obama said.