White House: Obama Hopes to Meet Pope in 'Near Future'

President Barack Obama will meet Pope Francis "in the near future," the White House said Tuesday, although it did not specify a date for their much-anticipated first encounter.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president "looks forward" to the meeting with the pontiff, of whom he has spoken with admiration.

Pope Francis was elected in March last year and had an immediate impact at the Vatican, his relaxed style and focus on poverty contrasting with the reserved conservatism of his predecessor.

His personal popularity, even among non-Catholics, has soared as Obama's once stellar approval ratings have fallen.

Last month, Obama spoke approvingly of the new pope, despite concerns in conservative U.S. circles that the Argentinian pontiff is hostile to free-market capitalism.

"Some of you may have seen just last week, the pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length," Obama said in a speech to a progressive Washington think tank.

"How could it be, he wrote, that it's not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?"

Francis had argued that such values spring from an unequal society in which "masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape."