In the run-up to President Barack Obama’s July 10, 2009 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, Cottier praised Obama’s “humble realism” and compared the president’s approach to abortion to the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas and early Christian tradition about framing laws in a pluralistic society. Cottier reacted to John Paul II's encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia by saying that the Catholic Church rejects the concept of open communion. Cottier defended the Church's view that the embryo is fully a human being. He came out in defense of Pope Pius XII against those who continue to criticize his legacy. Cottier was critical of anonymous Christianity, saying that a theological system that absorbs all realities into Christ ends by turning Christ into a kind of metaphysical postulate of the affirmation of human values, which makes the Church incapable of engaging in serious dialogue, even on the level of human rights. Then, saying that everybody is already of Christ, whether they know it or not, can make the mission futile. Cottier said that the use of condoms may be morally licit in the context of fighting AIDS.