What do President Obama and Pope Francis have in common?

Far away from the poor corners of Buenos Aires where Pope Francis first ministered, ‎or the streets of Chicago's South Side where Barack Obama first organized, there was one unifying thread for these unlikely journeys: the Catholic Church.

"Barack Obama got one of his first paychecks from the Roman Catholic Church when he was an organizer in Chicago ... both the pope and the president understand community organizing because they have that in common," Washington Post reporter E.J. Dionne said.

When President Obama and Pope Francis met in the Vatican last year, they also discussed something both had some experience with -- adoring crowds, elevated expectations and the burdens of unexpected celebrity, reports CBS News correspondent Major Garrett.

Mr. Obama told the pope he had learned people can burn with hope and then just as quickly grow disappointed. He cautioned that even though presidential politics and the papacy are different, this might happen to his holiness over time.

It may -- but there's no sign of it in America, or anywhere else.

Pope Francis has shifted the Vatican's emphasis from policing social issues to caring for the poor and the planet, an approach the president has embraced and found politically useful to applaud.

"I've been touched by his call to relieve suffering, and to show justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable... as Pope Francis made clear in his encyclical this summer, taking a stand against climate change is a moral obligation," Obama said in February at the National Prayer Breakfast.

In the pope, the president also found a powerful ally for normalizing ‎relations with Cuba -- harnessing the popularity and the advocacy of the Vatican.

"All presidents have liked to quote the pope and say they are on the pope's side... so President Obama is in a long political tradition and he happens to have a pope in Francis who agrees with him on some central issues," Dionne said.

While the White House is wary of politicizing the pope's visit, officials do point to topics like inequality, climate change, immigration and caring for refugees as topics likely to come up between the president and the pope later today. And while the White House has said that this is not a political meeting, critics point to the White House's decision to invite critics of the pope to the arrival ceremony as evidence that they are politicizing the visit.