VATICAN CITY (New York Times) -- President Bush met Saturday for the first time with Pope Benedict XVI, and while both men are religious conservatives who share many concerns, the pope raised his worries in their private meeting about the war in Iraq. According to the statement, the topics emphasized in meetings with the pope and his secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, were “Israeli-Palestinian questions, Lebanon, the worrying situation in Iraq and the critical conditions in which the Christian community finds itself.”

“On the part of Holy See, it is wished, yet again, for a ‘regional’ and ‘negotiated’ solution to the conflicts and crises that trouble the region,” the statement said in Italian.

While Mr. Bush faced few questions about the Iraq war in the first portion of his trip to Europe, the issue surfaced with some force here in Italy, which has withdrawn its troops from Iraq and where public sentiment is high against it.

The portion of Mr. Bush’s hour-long meeting with Benedict that was open to reporters seemed entirely friendly and relaxed: Amid the pomp of all Vatican ceremonies, the 80-year-old pope greeted Mr. Bush in the grand private papal library, and they immediately sat down at the pope’s wooden writing desk for an informal chat.

The pope asked Mr. Bush about the Group of 8 meeting in Germany, from which he had just arrived, and Mr. Bush said it was “successful.” Mr. Bush seemed relaxed, his legs crossed in front of the desk where the pope meets with world leaders.

The pope also asked Mr. Bush whether “the dialogue with Putin was good,” apparently referring to tensions over an American plan to install an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe that the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has strongly opposed. Bush, eyeing the reporters and photographers a few feet away who were straining to hear any news, said, “I’ll tell you in a minute.”

Bush also mentioned his plans to increase financing to combat AIDS in Africa, saying he would ask Congress to double to $30 billion the amount of money for the effort over five years.

The reporters were then shooed away, and the two men met privately for 35 minutes. Afterward, Laura Bush, the first lady, wearing a black dress and veil traditional for women who meet with popes, greeted Benedict. She was followed by top members of the president’s staff, including his top political aide, Karl Rove, National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and John D. Negroponte, the former ambassador to Iraq who now is deputy secretary of state. Each was given a souvenir papal medallion.

The president and the pope, as is traditional in such visits, traded gifts. The pope presented Mr. Bush with an etching of St. Peter’s Square from the 17th century and a gold papal medallion. The president gave the pope a white walking stick, made by a former homeless man from Texas who had become an artist, that was covered with the Ten Commandments in multiple colors. The pope double-checked with Bush what was written on the stick. “The Ten Commandments, sir,” the president said. He did not use the normal honorific of “Your Holiness.”

Bush arrived in Italy at a moment of particular strain between Italy and the United States: The day before, a trial had begun in Milan charging 26 Americans, nearly all of them operatives for the Central Intelligence Agency, and Italian intelligence operatives with kidnapping an imam in Italy in 2003.

It is the first trial involving the contentious American policy of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects are abducted and then interrogated in other countries, some of which permit torture.

The president arrived on Friday night after quick stops in the Czech Republic and Poland after the Group of 8 meeting. On Sunday, he is scheduled to visit Albania and Bulgaria.