President Obama met the Pope for the first time today in a groundbreaking encounter which should help repair the US leader’s relations with America’s Catholic hierarchy.

During a private 35-minute meeting, the President told Pope Benedict XVI that he would try to limit the number of abortions in the United States. President Obama supports the right of women to have abortions, but says the procedure should be rare.

Diplomats said the meeting would help Mr Obama counteract the hostility of conservative American Catholic bishops who vehemently oppose his lifting of President Bush's ban on government funding for stem cell research, and for group’s involved with abortion.

Among the gifts the Pope gave the President was a Catholic treatise titled Dignitas Personae, which lists medical techniques opposed by the Roman Catholic Church such as the therapeutic use of stem cells and the use of the morning-after contraceptive pill.

President Obama, who was later leaving for Ghana, said: “That’s what we discussed earlier” and then quipped, “I’ll have some reading to do on the flight".

Sources said the Pope and Mr Obama had found common ground on poverty, peace in the Middle East and the need to reach out to the Muslim world.

Mr Obama gave the Pope an ivory stole with gold crimson and blue trim once draped around the enshrined body of St John Neumann in Philadelphia, America's first saint.

Born in what is now the Czech Republic, Neumann emigrated to the United States and served as bishop of Philadelphia from 1852 until his death in 1860. He was canonised in 1977. The stole was removed two years ago when the body was re-dressed, US officials said.

Mr Obama's Muslim father enrolled him in a Catholic school as a child in Indonesia. He is now a Protestant who says he is taking his time deciding which church to join.

At the end of the encounter, held behind closed doors, Mr Obama's wife Michelle, dressed in black with a black mantilla veil on her head, was also presented to the pontiff. Earlier, Mrs Obama had taken their daughters Malia and Sasha on a tour of St Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel.