WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will visit the Rome and Vatican City next month in what will likely be his last presidential mission overseas, as he tries to solidify his legacy on the world stage.

But Biden’s farewell visit with Pope Francis is also likely to be deeply personal. As the second Roman Catholic president and the most religiously observant in recent history, Biden has formed an unusually close bond with the pontiff dating to his time as vice president.

During the four-day trip beginning Jan. 9 — ending just eight days before he hands off power to President-elect Donald Trump — Biden will also meet separately with Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, and the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.

Meloni, who led the G-7 this year, is one of the few major Western leaders who remains relatively popular as her counterparts — including Biden, the U.K.'s Rishi Sunak, and Germany’s Olaf Scholz — are losing or have lost their grip on power. The White House said Biden would use the visit to focus on the strength of the U.S.-Italy relationship and Meloni’s leadership of the Group of Seven.

The highlight of the trip will likely be Biden’s audience with Francis, who turned 88 this week and has curtailed his own travel. Biden has long been an admirer of Francis, calling him a man of “great empathy” and “a really, truly genuine, decent man.”

Their relationship blossomed in 2015, two years into Francis’ papacy and five months after the death of Biden’s oldest son, Beau. The two met in an airplane hangar in Philadelphia during a papal visit, and spoke about Beau for 10 or 15 minutes, Biden later recounted.

“Pope Francis has become — I don’t want to exaggerate — someone who has provided great solace for my family when my son died,” Biden said in 2021. The two men also met twice during Biden’s presidency, once at the Vatican in 2021 and again last June at the G-7 summit in southern Italy.

During their meeting on Jan. 10, Biden and Francis will discuss “efforts to advance peace around the world,” the White House said. They’re likely to find common ground on climate change, advocacy for the poor and efforts to end armed conflict around the world. Biden and the pope spoke Thursday ahead of the trip about efforts to advance peace, human rights, and religious freedoms, according to the White House.

Yet there remains a rift over abortion. Once an opponent, Biden’s views on the procedure shifted as his Democratic Party became more associated with abortion rights. But while it was a motivating force for Democrats after the Supreme Court decision striking down the national right to the procedure, Biden remained uncomfortable with the issue, even avoiding the word “abortion” in a State of the Union address.

The spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics — about 62 million of whom live in the U.S. — the pope has been courted by politicians of both parties. Trump and his family visited the Vatican for a papal audience during his first foreign trip as president in 2017.

The Vatican later called the meeting “cordial” and said Trump and Francis discussed their “joint commitment in favor of life, and freedom of religion and of conscience.”

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