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Pope Francis and Donald Trump Meet at the Vatican No Fireworks: Pope and Trump Meet in Quiet Diplomacy
(about 11 hours later)
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis welcomed President Trump to the Vatican on Wednesday, shaking his hand before ushering him into his study for the first face-to-face meeting of the two leaders, who symbolize starkly different views of the world. VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis and President Trump discussed terrorism and the radicalization of young people in a meeting on Wednesday in which two global leaders with starkly different world views sought to bridge the chasm between them with a handshake, a private audience and a mutual pledge to work for peace.
Around 8:20 a.m., under a crystalline blue sky, the president’s motorcade rolled into the courtyard of the Apostolic Palace, where ostrich-feather-plumed Swiss Guards saluted as Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, stepped out of an armored limousine. In a larger meeting with American and Vatican officials, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, urged Mr. Trump not to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord.
A few minutes before Mr. Trump’s visit, the pope arrived at the palace in a blue Ford Focus. He stepped out of the car and walked into a side entrance. The pope, by turns dour and smiling, welcomed a more effusive president to the seat of a religion that claims more than 70 million followers in the United States. The two stuck mainly to protocol, avoiding a public reprise of the barbs they aimed at each other during Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign or the pope’s thinly veiled critiques of Mr. Trump as a symbol of a dangerously reinvigorated nationalism.
For Mr. Trump, who landed in Rome after stops in Saudi Arabia and Israel, the audience in the Vatican caps a tour of the ancestral homes of three of the world’s great monotheistic religions. For Francis, who recently made his own landmark visit to Egypt last month, it was a chance to welcome a second American leader, after President Barack Obama paid his respects in 2014. But there appeared to be a message in the gifts the pope gave to his guest. They included a copy of his influential essay on the importance of saving the environment, a rebuke to the climate change skepticism espoused by Mr. Trump. Francis also presented him with a medallion engraved with the image of an olive tree — “a symbol of peace,” he explained.
Mr. Trump, wearing a dark suit, a white shirt and a black-and-white stripe tie, entered the Clementine Hall of the palace behind a dozen attendants and was accompanied by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, prefect of the papal household. “We can use peace,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump nodded with a serious face as Archbishop Gänswein, who is close to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, made small talk. Behind them were Mrs. Trump, wearing a black dress and with her hair covered by a veil, who listened to an attendant, and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and adviser, also wearing a veil over her hair and in a black dress with lace hem and pearls. Francis replied, “It is with all hope that you may become an olive tree to make peace.”
They were followed by Ms. Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner; Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson; and H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, who paused to examine frescoes. With other members of the president’s retinue, they walked past seven Swiss Guards standing at attention in front of a white papal throne, halberds in hand. As he bade the pope farewell, Mr. Trump told him, “I won’t forget what you said.”
The private audience ended at about 9 a.m., with the signaling of a bell, and soon after Mrs. Trump went into the pope’s studio. There was a sense in the Vatican that Mr. Trump was easier to talk to than his tough language on the campaign trail and sharp words toward Francis had led them to believe. “Trump’s bark is worse than his bite,” said a senior Vatican official who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the meeting.
The president smiled broadly as he stood next to Francis, who looked more serious but smiled as he shook Mrs. Trump’s hand. The president then introduced his daughter, Ivanka, and the rest of his delegation, beginning with Mr. Kushner. For Mr. Trump, who came here after stops in Saudi Arabia and Israel, the visit to the Vatican capped a tour of the ancestral homes of three of the world’s great monotheistic religions. For Francis, who made his own landmark visit to Egypt last month, it was a chance to welcome a second American leader, after President Barack Obama paid his respects in 2014.
The pope handed out rosaries to members of the delegation before the group posed for pictures, and then he bade the president and his wife farewell. Unlike that meeting, few expected a meeting of the minds. Pope Francis and Mr. Trump have diametrically opposed views on issues as varied as immigration, climate change and arms sales. Although both appeared determined not to let politics spoil their encounter, their fraught personal history and divergent personal styles made for a loaded backdrop.
Smiles and pleasantries aside, the atmospherics of this meeting were fraught. Pope Francis and Mr. Trump have diametrically opposed views on issues as varied as immigration, climate change and arms sales. Although both men seemed determined not to let politics intrude on their encounter, the underlying tensions were clear. At 8:20 a.m., under an azure sky, the president’s motorcade rolled into the courtyard of the Apostolic Palace. Ostrich-feather-plumed Swiss Guards stood at attention as Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, stepped out of an armored Chevrolet sport utility vehicle — he in a dark suit, white shirt and black-and-white-stripe tie; she in a black dress with a veil on her hair. A few minutes earlier, the pope arrived in a lone blue Ford Focus. He stepped out and walked into a side entrance.
On Tuesday night, Cardinal Peter Turkson, a top Vatican official with close ties to Francis, acknowledged the differences in a post on Twitter: “Pope Francis & Pres Trump reach out to Islam-world to exorcise it of rel. Violence. One offers peace of dialogue, the other security of arms,” he wrote, in an apparent reference to the $110 billion weapons sale that Mr. Trump concluded with Saudi Arabia. Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the prefect of the papal household, greeted Mr. Trump and escorted him to an antechamber outside the pope’s office, where, after a few seconds, Francis came to greet him.
“Thank you so much,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s an honor.”
After posing for a picture — “protocol,” the pope murmured — Mr. Trump took a seat across a wooden desk from Francis. Vatican officials shooed reporters out of the room and the two men met for half an hour (the pope’s session with Mr. Obama lasted 20 minutes longer).
Speaking to reporters later, Mr. Trump described the session as “fantastic.” Later, on Twitter, he wrote, “I leave the Vatican more determined than ever to pursue PEACE in our world.”
The Vatican said in a statement that the two discussed the Middle East and “the protection of Christian communities,” as well as “the joint commitment in favor of life, and freedom of worship and conscience” and the Catholic Church’s aid work on behalf of immigrants.
Immigration has been a fault line between history’s first South American pope and a president who came to power promising to build a wall to keep Mexican migrants out of the United States. But people close to the pope said in the days leading up to the meeting that he would not reprimand Mr. Trump, but seek to impart his values and build a dialogue that could cause a reconsideration of policies by Mr. Trump, if not a conversion.
A bell signaling the end of the audience rang at 9 a.m., and Mrs. Trump joined her husband and the pope. Francis looked graver than the beaming Mr. Trump, but he lightened up when he shook Mrs. Trump’s hand, jokingly asking her in Italian, “Did you give him potizza to eat?” (potizza is a Slovenian dessert).
Mr. Trump then introduced his daughter, Ivanka, who also wore a black dress and veil; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and other members of the American delegation, including Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster.
Notably missing was Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who left the trip before coming to Rome. Mr. Bannon, a Catholic, has criticized Pope Francis as a socialist, a global elitist and promoter of Muslim migration to Europe.
“That is why this visit is so important,” said Jim Nicholson, a former American ambassador to the Vatican. “There still is an educational element to it. It is an opportunity for President Trump to learn a lot more about this man, his life and his formation.”
In his gifts, the pope seemed eager to impart a lesson. He gave the president a copy of his most recent World Day of Peace message (“I signed it personally for you,” Francis said), as well as three of his writings: on the family, the joy of the Gospel, and, most tellingly for a recipient who has called climate change a hoax, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.” Written in 2015, it is the first papal encyclical focused solely on the environment.
“Well, I’ll be reading them,” said Mr. Trump, who gave the pope a set of books by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The pope and the president were both elected as outsiders promising to carry the far-off voices of the forgotten to the centers of global power. But that is more or less where the similarities end.The pope and the president were both elected as outsiders promising to carry the far-off voices of the forgotten to the centers of global power. But that is more or less where the similarities end.
Mr. Trump is the scion of a real estate developer and a thrice-married lover of all things gilded. Pope Francis has made a calling card out of modesty. When, in 2013, he paid his own hotel bill after being elected pope, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter: “I don’t like seeing the Pope standing at the checkout counter (front desk) of a hotel in order to pay his bill. It’s not Pope-like!”Mr. Trump is the scion of a real estate developer and a thrice-married lover of all things gilded. Pope Francis has made a calling card out of modesty. When, in 2013, he paid his own hotel bill after being elected pope, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter: “I don’t like seeing the Pope standing at the checkout counter (front desk) of a hotel in order to pay his bill. It’s not Pope-like!”
The two have fundamentally different views about how to restore balance to a global economic system they consider broken, with Mr. Trump focusing on the engines of capitalism and Pope Francis fighting to protect the workers and the disadvantaged from dehumanizing forces of the modern world. The two have fundamentally different views about how to restore balance to a global economic system they consider broken, with Mr. Trump focusing on the engines of capitalism and Francis fighting to protect the disadvantaged from the dehumanizing forces of the modern world.
“The thing they have in common is a major responsibility to govern,” said Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit priest who edits the Vatican-approved journal La Civiltà Cattolica. “The pope is an actor on the world stage and Trump is the president of a country with a huge impact on the world.” But Francis is also a shrewd political operator, and he had said that he was not seeking a confrontation. “In our talk, things will come out,” he told reporters after a recent trip to Fátima, Portugal. “I will say what I think, he will say what he thinks, but I never, ever, wanted to make a judgment without hearing the person.”
Pope Francis, a savvy political operator, had signaled in the days leading up to the meeting that he was not seeking a confrontation. That is a far cry from his previous remarks about Mr. Trump. In February 2016, Francis said, “A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
Speaking on the papal plane after a recent trip to Fátima, Portugal, Francis was asked what he expected from the meeting. “In our talk, things will come out, I will say what I think, he will say what he thinks, but I never, ever, wanted to make a judgment without hearing the person,” he said.
That is a far cry from his previous remarks about Mr. Trump. In February 2016, Francis responded to a question about the president’s hard line against immigrants and his desire to build a wall along the border with Mexico, telling reporters, “A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
Mr. Trump, a candidate at the time, swiftly returned fire. “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” he said at a campaign rally in South Carolina.Mr. Trump, a candidate at the time, swiftly returned fire. “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” he said at a campaign rally in South Carolina.
“No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith,” he continued. “If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’ ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.”