When Pres­id­ent Obama wel­comes Pope Fran­cis to the White House next week, nobody will be watch­ing more closely than the na­tion’s 79 mil­lion Cath­ol­ics, most of whom ad­mire and re­spect their re­li­gious lead­er but have a much more con­flic­ted view of their polit­ic­al lead­er.

Twice, they voted for Obama, but not by big mar­gins. Sev­er­al times, their in­sti­tu­tions have sued him, but not with great suc­cess. And all this while their bish­ops have al­tern­ated between strong de­nun­ci­ations of parts of his health care law and en­thu­si­ast­ic en­dorse­ments of his im­mig­ra­tion and Ir­an policies. “Obama has largely been per­ceived as someone who has not been a friend of the Cath­ol­ic Church in Amer­ica,” said Chad C. Pecknold, who teaches in the School of Theo­logy and Re­li­gious Stud­ies at The Cath­ol­ic Uni­versity. The re­la­tion­ship, he told Na­tion­al Journ­al, is “com­plic­ated.”

But the pres­id­ent ap­pears to have found an ally in Fran­cis.

Be­hind the scenes, the two lead­ers worked to­geth­er to end the five-dec­ade es­trange­ment between the United States and Cuba. The pres­id­ent has wel­comed the pope’s em­phas­is on fight­ing poverty and his de-em­phas­is of ec­cle­si­ast­ic­al scold­ing on so­cial and sexu­al mat­ters. Obama also cheered Fran­cis’s en­cyc­lic­al de­clar­ing that cli­mate change is mostly man-made. “I think when he meets with the pres­id­ent, I ex­pect there to be a warm per­son­al ex­change and that it will be viewed as an ex­change between per­sons who like each oth­er,” said Pecknold.