In a lengthy World Affairs piece, journalist Roland Flamini takes the position that Pope Francis is a “major player” on the stage of global foreign policy. Flamini examines the pope’s travels in the Holy Land and the Ukraine, noting “that the non-European pope is shaping his own foreign policy course.”

The article also discusses the pope’s meeting with President Obama, noting that while the pope is firmly “anti-consumerist,” Obama is the political leader of a country where shopping is a “sacrament.” Kishore Jayabalan, who heads the Rome-based Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, was asked to summarize the difference between the two men.

They have very different starting points,” he says. “The pope can use his office to raise moral concern about the unborn and inequality but there’s not a whole lot he can directly do about it.” It’s the president who has the means and the power to take action but hasn’t, in the view of the Vatican. Also, the pope has been quite outspoken about the global economy and global capitalism not helping the poor, while Obama “presides over a free-market economy” and “recognizes that the global economy has helped the poor: people in Asia, Africa, and parts of Latin America have benefitted from free trade.”

Read “Peter and Caesar: Is Pope Francis Shifting the Vatican’s Worldview?” at World Affairs.