Vatican Angry at White House over Abortion

While President Obama's special envoy tries to broker peace in the Middle East and the White House dangles an olive branch before a near-nuclear Iran, a new foreign policy confrontation is in the making -- with the Vatican.

After he ended a ban last week on federal funding to international groups that perform or promote abortions, Obama is taking heat from the Roman Catholic Church, that political powerhouse based overseas.

Vatican officials said last weekend that they were disappointed by the president's decision to reverse the so-called Mexico City policy.

"Among the many good things that he could have done, Barack Obama instead chose the worst," said Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, a top official with the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life.

And abortion isn't the only issue on which the new president may rile the Vatican. His positions on stem cell research, gay rights and faith-based initiatives, too, are generally at odds with the church hierarchy.

How this will affect Obama's appeal to Catholic voters remains to be seen. According to exit polls, the president got 53 percent of the Catholic vote in November -- 13 percent more than John Kerry, a Catholic, got in 2004.