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President Obama's Vatican meeting with Pope Francis wasn't without a dose of irony.

The U.S. president, once the world leader whose vow of "hope" and "change" excited millions, seemed eclipsed Thursday in that department by the pope.

The pope certainly is polling better than Obama among Americans. A recent St. Leo University poll placed the pope's approval rating at 85 percent among Catholics and 65 percent among all Americans. By contrast, Obama's approval rating was 47 percent in the same poll.

Another irony: while the pope's approval ratings are higher than Obama's, Americans, including many Catholics, agree more with Obama on certain social issues than with the pope.

For instance, on reproductive rights, more Americans are closer to Obama's stance than the pope's. Sixty three percent of Americans say they would not like to see the court completely overturn the Roe v. Wade decision, according to Pew Research polling. More than a third of U.S. Catholics, 36 percent, say abortion should be legal in most cases, according to an Oct. 2013 Quinnipiac University poll; another 16 percent say abortion should be legal in all cases.

When it comes to same-sex marriage, Quinnipiac reports 60 percent of U.S. Catholics support it — a higher level than the general population.

To some extent, the pope benefits from his relative newness, and from the appearance of being a fresh break from his recent predecessors. His eschewing of papal lavishness and call for the Catholic Church to focus more on social justice have excited millions around the world.

By contrast, the realities of being a U.S. president in the 21st century, of being ultimately responsible for drone attacks and controversial NSA surveillance practices, have left even many of Obama's strongest supporters disappointed that the president hasn't changed the world as much as they had hoped.

As Michael Anthony Novak, a theology professor at St. Leo University told It's All Politics, it's more the rule than the exception that a president and pope wouldn't have much ideological overlap.

"Popes and presidents don't perfectly line up," Novak told me. "Whenever they get together, it's a fairly rare thing that their interests would perfectly align."

The kind of alignment between President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II at their first meeting, when they seemed to be of one mind on directly confronting communism, is rare, Novak said.

The U.S. president heads a superpower with vast economic and military might. The pope meanwhile heads the world's smallest country, Vatican City, but as leader of his church he has great moral power even beyond its adherents.

"Obama sounded out the Vatican last year about the idea of intervention in Syria," because the pope's support and moral authority might help the president make his case for action, Novak said.

"Did the Vatican think this fit the concept of just-war theory and so forth? And in that case, Francis seemed to be strongly against the idea of the West intervening in a strong military way," he said.

It was another area in which the president and the pope differed.

One area where the one-time Chicago community organizer and the former Buenos Aires parish priest align, however, is in the need to address economic inequality.

But while they both recognize the problem, the pope is certainly to the left of the president in his critique of capitalism. Still, their concern for social justice represents an opportunity for the two men to work together.

Novak notes that Obama met with the pope for a longer time than the Vatican usually allots for such meetings, even with other heads of state: "I don't know what it says yet but it says something."

Still, he says, the Vatican knows Obama is closer to the end of his presidency than its start.

It has the makings of a great mystery: Artwork stolen from a prominent museum, plus the FBI, a beautiful woman and an intrepid reporter. But this isn't fiction, it's a strange, true tale of how a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir has now safely returned home to Baltimore.

At first it was known as the Renoir found at a Baltimore flea market — a woman took the painting to an auction house where they concluded that it was, indeed, On the Shore of the Seine — a Renoir that had been purchased in Paris in 1925 by American art collectors Herbert and Saidie May. In a press release, the auction house said it could sell for up to $100,000.

The flea market story intrigued Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira. He knew that Saidie May was a major donor to the Baltimore Museum of Art, but when he called the BMA, they told him they had no record of the painting. Shapira went to the museum to look through May's papers anyway, just days before the auction opened.

"I found some documents showing that the museum had actually owned this painting and then the museum discovered documents on its own showing that the staff back in the 1950s had actually reported the painting stolen," Shapira says.

It was stolen — possibly in the middle of the night — in November, 1951. Once the Baltimore Museum of Art confirmed the Renoir belonged to them, they immediately contacted the auction house. The auction house contacted the FBI, and the FBI seized the painting.

Read Ian Shapira's Stories

Flea-market Renoir allegedly was stolen from Baltimore museum; auction canceled

Authorities in Turkey are reportedly going ahead with a ban on access to YouTube days after a similar move in the country to block Twitter.

The Turkish telecommunications authority TIB is quoted in Turkish state media as saying it has taken an "administrative measure" against YouTube.

The news follows earlier reports that a recording, allegedly of a meeting among top Turkish officials discussing military intervention in Syria, was posted on YouTube.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday lashed out against the post:

"They even leaked a national security meeting," he told a crowd of supporters in Diyarbakir. "This is villainous, this is dishonesty.

"Who are you serving by doing audio surveillance of such an important meeting?" Erdogan said as he campaigned for March 30 elections.

Reuters quotes Google Inc, who owns YouTube, as saying it's looking into reports that Turkish users are unable to access the video-sharing site.

"There is no technical issue on our side and we're looking into the situation," a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

As we reported last week, Turkey moved then to ban Twitter, a move that was quickly circumvented by a text-to-tweet function that bypassed the ban.

As we reported at the time, "the #TwitterblockedinTurkey hastag quickly spread upon news of the ban, and the country's own president tweeted his disdain.

In the wake of the latest reports, a new hastag, #youtubeblockedinturkey, has sprung up.

Protesters in Taiwan are angry. They've taken over the island's parliament, blocking the doors with piles of furniture. They also stormed the offices of the Cabinet, where they clashed with riot police armed with batons and water cannons.

The source for all this hostility? A proposed trade deal with mainland China that would open up more than 100 service sectors, ranging from banks and telecommunications to travel agencies and hospitals.

But like the protests in Ukraine a few months back, the discontent in Taiwan is about much more than Chinese investors setting up travel agencies on the island. It's about Taiwan's future and how it preserves its identity — and relevance — in the shadow of China and its growing economic, political and military clout. Many see it as a battle for Taiwan's economic and political survival.

"The Taiwanese are having a kind of anxiety," acknowledged Lung Ying-tai, Taiwan's first minister of culture, during a meeting earlier this month with a group of U.S. journalists.

"Everybody gets very edgy [about China's economic strength]," she said. "But the Taiwanese are even edgier than other people, [who] don't have missiles stationed right across the strait."

Losing Its Economic Edge

The two sides split in 1949 during the Chinese civil war. Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province and remains committed to the goal of eventual reunification — and hasn't ruled out the use of force to do so.

When I lived in the capital Taipei a decade ago, anxiety about China was already palpable. But then, Taiwan — one of the Asian Tigers — was thriving economically, boasting vigorous growth and leading-edge high-tech companies that made semiconductor, personal computers and notebooks.