Rosalynn Carter was the only First Lady to welcome a Pope upon his arrival in the United States, 1979.

Last week, Roman Catholic Pope Francis made his first trip to the United States.

First Lady Michelle Obama shakes hands with the Pope Francis upon his arrival in Washington, September 24, 2015.

Upon his arrival in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Barack Obama welcomed the Pope to Washington directly at the airport, rather than wait for his arrival at the White House.

His wife Michelle was also there, along with their two daughters. While standing out in her blue dress, the First Lady played a more subdued role during the pontiff’s visit compared to some of her predecessors going back to the 19th century.

Mrs. Carter and John Paul.

Nearly forty years ago, however, it was a First Lady alone who did it first.

In 1979, Rosalynn Carter, wearing a modest, closed black hat was on hand to welcome Pope John Paul II as he alighted from his plane for the first of what is now three visits to the White House by the leader of the global faith.

The Baptist Carters were the first to host a Pope in the White House.

Following the South Lawn arrival ceremony for John Paul II, presided over by President Jimmy Carter, Mrs. Carter guided His Holiness through the executive mansion, including a tour of the family’s private quarters.

There, the presidential couple and their daughter Amy presented the Pope with a state gift and he offered them his.

Then the Carters escorted him onto the Truman Balcony where they waved to the guests who’d assembled for the arrival ceremony.

The Carters and the Pope exchange gifts during his visit with them in the White House family quarters.

The Carters and the Pope on the Truman Balcony.

Rosalynn Carter and Amy Carter visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City, 1980.

John Paul II was the first Pope to visit the White House, Francis now being the third. In between them, the only other Pope to do so was Benedict XVI, who came as the guest of George W. and Laura Bush.

Laura Bush accepts Pope Benedict’s state gift to the United States, presented in his papal reception room, 2006.

Arriving for a two-day visit to Washington on April 15, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI was given an unexpected privilege at the White House by Laura Bush. As he and the presidential couple entered the state floor entrance hall, one of those grandiose cakes the pastry chefs there have made their pride signature. was wheeled out for him It was to mark the pontiff’s 81st birthday.

The Bushes, Benedict & birthday cake.

His predecessor John Paul II, topped that as far as presidential perks go. In 2004, W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a White House ceremony.

Laura Bush greets an ailing Pope John Paul II, 2004.

Laura Bush holds the record among First Ladies for meetings with two sequential Popes. She did it three times with John Paul II (2001, 2002, 2004) and three times with Benedict XVI (2007 and twice in 2008).

Laura Bush with Benedict, one of her six papal encounters.

Nancy Reagan met more times with one Pope than any other First Lady, in 1982, 1984, 1985, and and twice in 1987. In 1985, she went to Vatican City alone, where she discussed aspects of her effort to raise public awareness on how to prevent school-age children from experimenting with drugs.

In June of 1982, Nancy Reagan first met Pope John Paul II with the President, at the Vatican.

At a formal dinner in 1987, Nancy Reagan struck a more informal tone in the short dress of her attire in the presence of the pontiff.

Nancy Reagan went to see the Pope alone in 1985. (Getty)

The American First Lady and the Catholic Pope visited a grammar school together in 1987.

The Reagans with the Pope in Miami for World Youth Day, 1987. (Getty)

Hillary Clinton and Barbara Bush both had two meetings each with John Paul II, in all four instances with their husbands. Mrs. Bush met with him in 1989 and 1991, and Hillary Clinton in 1994 and 1995.

Michelle Obama has now met Francis twice, the first time being last year and met Benedict once, in 2009.

Pat Nixon also met twice with the same Pope (Paul) in 1969 and 1970. Betty Ford met once with Pope Paul, in 1975.

Hillary Clinton with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, 1994. (Corbis)

The Clintons welcome John Paul at Newark Airport, 1995.

Barbara and George Bush at the Vatican, 1991.

Pope Benedict with Michelle Obama at the Vatican in 2009.

Pat Nixon and Pope Paul at the Vatican.

The Nixons with Pope Paul in 1970. It was not widely known at the time, and likely not to the Pope, that Pat Nixon’s father had been a Catholic. (Corbis)

Gerald and Betty Ford look over a gift they presented to Pope Paul during their 1975 Vatican visit. (Getty)

A number of recent First Ladies never met Popes – although their husbands did. Lady Bird Johnson did not accompany LBJ on his whirlwind December 1967 world trip, during which he met Pope Paul. It is unclear why she was absent from a meeting in 1965, when the Pope came to the United States.

Barbara Eisenhower with Pope John and Ike.

Mamie Eisenhower did not accompany her husband during his 1959 presidential world tour, although her daughter-in-law Barbara Eisenhower acted as ceremonial partner for Ike on state occasions and consequently got to meet Pope John.

The first incumbent First Lady to have a Pope encounter was Edith Wilson, during a trip to Europe with her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, following the end of World War I. In Belgium, England, France and Italy, the Wilsons were treated as American royalty.

While making a world tour with her husband after his Administration, Julia Grant met Pope Leo in 1878.

In early 1919, with her husband becoming not just the first incumbent President to travel to a foreign country but meet a Pope, she got to meet Benedict XV.

Harry and Bess Truman with Pope Pius during their world tour in 1958. (eastwingrules.com)

Two former First Ladies also met Popes, Julia Grant in 1879 and Bess Truman in 1958, both of them traveling the world with their husbands.

The only Catholic First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy met Pope John in 1962, stopping in Rome on her way to make her famous trip to India and Pakistan; there was a mission to that meeting since the First Lady was using her status as an important symbol of the U.S. to ask a personal favor.

Jackie Kennedy with Pope John at the Vatican, 1962.

The widowed Mrs. Kennedy bowing her head to Pope Paul, who she meet in New York in 1965.

Mrs. Kennedy was hoping for some speedier action on her sister’s filing for an annulment of her first marriage. It would be granted. Pope John died just months before the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. Here is some silent news footage showing Jackie Kennedy at the Vatican and with Pope John:

Two years later, Jackie Kennedy was among the most famous of guests at the United Nations in New York to hear the speech of the new pontiff, Paul.

Most of these encounters have been more curiosities, rather than incidents of any historical significance beyond the symbolic.

In fact, the most interesting meetings may have been those of three women who met Popes before they became First Ladies.

Pope Leo.

In the summer of 1902, as her husband was negotiating with the Vatican for the purchase of friarlands in the Philippines, which the U.S. had taken from Spain as its territory, Nellie Taft was enjoying a daily schedule of events with Roman high society.

Summoned to the Vatican, she was joined by her three children and mother-in-law and promenaded down the long chambers until bidden into the Pope’s audience room.

Mrs. Taft.

He extended his hand to her, and Mrs. Taft bowed to receive his blessing. She further recalled:

He began speaking to me in French and finding that I could answer him in that language he talked with me for perhaps half an hour with a most charmingly graceful manner of comment and compliment….He referred to Mr. Roosevelt as “President Roomvine” which was as near as he seemed to be able to get that very un-Latin name; said that he himself in his youth, had been devoted to the chase and would like very much to read The Strenuous Life.

Before Taft returned to the Philippines where he was serving as the U.S. Governor-General, Pope Leo XIII beckoned the American party back, giving Nellie Taft the personal gift of a German tile depicting St. Ursula, who mythology ascribes a strong wanderlust, a quality the Pope had learned that Mrs. Taft also possessed.

The future Ida McKinley found Pope Pius IX to be a “nice old man.”

In 1870, the highly-educated assistant bank manager Ida Saxton acquired some continental polish a year before she married William McKinley by making a six month tour of Europe. A Presbyterian, her letters home made frequently disparaging remarks about the pageantry of Catholic masses she attended as a novelty while in France.

When she got to Rome, however, Ida couldn’t resist the chance to meet Pope Pius IX. Wearing a veil that made her feel “about sixty-five,” she “bowed before him and kissed his hand not because he is the Pope,” insisting to her parents, “but such a nice old man.”

In 1841, three years before she married the widowed President John Tyler, New York debutante Julia Gardiner and her sister Margaret were granted an audience with Pope Gregory XVI. The future Mrs. Tyler left feeling that the pontiff’s “affability of manner and pleasant conversation [was] very gratifying.”

While touring Rome before her 1844 marriage to the incumbent President John Tyler, Julia Gardiner Tyler was the first First Lady to meet a Pope; as her sister Margaret recalled, Julia was awed by kindly Gregory XVI.

They also witnessed “the washing of feet, and serving at table, of thirteen poor priests, of different nations, by the Pope in imitations of the washing of the apostles’ feet by our Savior.”

When the Italian high society women followed the Pope’s example, however, Julia’s sister was repulsed: “It is a disgusting act of humility! These ladies actually washed and kissed the feet of the filthy miserable people.”

Julia Gardiner Tyler felt otherwise, never forgetting the splendor of the “roman church pomp and show.” Although she would never wash any feet but her own, some thirty years later she converted to Catholicism.

Julia Gardiner Tyler, the first Catholic First Lady of the United States.

Categories: First Ladies

Tags: Hillary Clinton, Ida McKinley, Jacqueline Kennedy, Julia Tyler, Michelle Obama, Nancy Reagan, Nellie Taft, Rosalynn Carter