Trump makes peace with Pope Francis
Leaders take on positive tone as U.S. president makes first official visit to Vatican
VATICAN CITY — Setting aside past differences and rude comments, President Donald Trump and Pope Francis put a determinedly positive face on their first meeting Wednesday at the Vatican.
The two global leaders, vastly different in temperament and views of the world, talked seriously and extensively in a 30-minute private meeting about terrorism, the radicalization of young people, immigration and climate change, officials said. Details were not revealed.
But all was upbeat in public with peace the overarching theme.
Francis gave Trump a medal featuring an olive branch.
“We can use peace,” said the president, acknowledging the symbolism.
He gave the Pope a custom-bound, first-edition set of Martin Luther King Jr.’s works, an engraved stone from the King Memorial in Washington and a bronze sculpture of a flowering lotus titled Rising Above.
The Pope’s other gifts could be taken as offering a more pointed message, though Francis is known to give them to other visitors, too.
He gave Trump three bound papal documents that he has written and which to some degree define his papacy and priorities. One focuses on the environment, demanding an end to a “structurally perverse” economic system that has turned Earth into an “immense pile of filth.” He frames climate change as an urgent moral crisis and blames global warming on an unfair, fossil fuelbased industrial model that harms the poor the most.
Trump has expressed skepticism about global warming and possible causes and has promised changes to spur more coal and oil production in the U.S.
During the presidential campaign, the Pope was also sharply critical of Trump’s pledge to build an impenetrable wall on the Mexican border and his declaration that the U.S. should turn away Muslim immigrants and refugees.
But there was none of that Wednesday.
Francis even had a light moment with the first lady, asking via a translator, “What do you give him to eat, potica?” referring to a favourite papal dessert from her native Slovenia.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner were also introduced to the pontiff.
When Trump left, he told the Pope: “Thank you, I won’t forget what you said.”
“We had a fantastic meeting,” the president said afterward. He tweeted later it was the “honour of a lifetime.”
The president is midway through a nine-day international journey that has included Middle East stops in the cradles of Islam and Judaism. He arrived late Wednesday in Brussels.