Biden, the nation's second Catholic president, spoke with the pontiff to name him a recipient of the award, the White House said.

Warning of “the increasingly concrete threat of a world war,” Pope Francis called for “the diplomacy of hope” in his address to the ambassadors of the 184 countries that have diplomatic relations with the Holy See.

Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy as Archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Sister Simona Brambilla, an Italian Consolata missionary, as prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

President Biden has canceled his upcoming trip to Italy, including an audience with Pope Francis, to “remain focused on directing the full federal response” in the wake of the devastating wildfires raging in California.

“Today we know how to turn our eyes toward Mars or virtual worlds, but we struggle to look into the eyes of a child who has been left on the margins and is being exploited and abused,” the pope said at his general audience Jan. 8.

Pope Francis today named Cardinal Robert McElroy as the archbishop of Washington, tapping one of his most like-minded allies to head the Catholic Church in the U.S. capital at the start of Donald Trump’s second administration.