Vice President Joe Biden thanked Pope Francis for “more comfort than even he...will ever understand” in the days after his son’s death, he said Friday.
The vice president, a lifelong Roman Catholic, spoke at a Vatican conference on regenerative medicine to bolster support for his “moonshot” effort to cure cancer, Bloomberg reported. He lost his son Beau, a former Delaware attorney general, to brain cancer last May.
“I am calling for philanthropists, corporations and governments around the world to increase their investments in ways that improves patient outcomes," Biden said, according to Bloomberg. "There’s an overwhelming need for public-private partnerships to bring together all of the human, financial, and knowledge resources at our disposal to make a quantum leap.”
Biden launched his cancer initiative after his son’s death, and President Barack Obama vowed to support the “moonshot” during his State of the Union in January.
Pope Francis also spoke about expanding access to developing treatments to “safeguard human life and the dignity of the person,” the Associated Press reported.
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