The news of the moment is that President Obama has expressed unqualified delight at the performance of Pope Francis.

If I were Pope Francis, and I learned that Barack Obama has been skipping around the White House, doing cartwheels and continuously shouting “Yippee!” and “Yee-Haa!” in his ebullience over my performance, and only breaking his celebratory antics to lean out the window occasionally and give the rude-finger salute in the general directions of Cardinal Dolan and Archbishop Chaput (one salute with each hand) while shouting triumphalistic insults at them, I’d reflect very hard and deep on what I’d done and refrained from doing that has so delighted him.

What I wouldn’t do would be to kid myself that since I think he’s a great guy and he thinks I’m a great guy, he’ll be really interested to have one-to-one dialogue with me and hear my point of view on world and American issues, then formulate policy in ways to please me.

On the other hand, since in an interview with a declared atheist journalist a couple of days ago Pope Francis stated that “The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old”, I’m certain that President Obama would be eager to dialogue with him on these themes, and to express wholehearted agreement with anything the Pope might care to say on them. After all, if you were Obama, wouldn’t you? It would be a no-cost (to Obama) way of cementing a wonderful budding friendship, and ensuring that the Pope keeps beaming benignly on him, and saying and doing nothing which might displease him. Pope Francis, for his part, might feel flattered beyond measure if he learned that he was becoming known as Obama’s Pope.