Trump and the Pope: a meeting of an unlikely pair
U.S. president and pontiff to meet Wednesday, despite having very little in common
ROME— Pope Francis believes climate change is one of the greatest threats to humanity. U.S. President Donald Trump thinks it might be a Chinese hoax. Francis wants the world’s doors swung open to refugees. Trump wants fewer of them in America. Income inequality is a serious concern for the Pope. The billionaire president would rewrite the U.S. tax code to make the wealthy even richer.
No two world leaders would seem to have less in common. They’ll meet face to face at the Vatican for the first time on Wednesday, at Trump’s request.
For the president, it’s an encounter that may confer some legitimacy as he grapples with a political crisis back home. For Francis, it’s a chance to influence a leader who, for all his stumbles, remains the most powerful person in the world.
“There’s a whole range of issues on which the Pope and Trump differ, but the point of their meeting isn’t to forge agreement on them or to change each other’s minds,” papal biographer Austen Ivereigh said. “The point is to establish a bond of trust, which they can both call on in the future to further their agendas.”
The visit is sandwiched between Trump’s spin through Saudi Arabia and Israel, a NATO meeting and the annual G7 summit.
Francis adopted a wait-and-see attitude on the eve of the encounter. Asked whether he expected Trump to soften his stand on issues, such as climate change and migrants, when the two meet, Francis told reporters that he was not into “political calculation.”
“We’ll talk, each of us will say what he thinks. Each of us will listen to the other,” Francis said. “I never make a judgment on a person without first listening to that person. We’ll talk and afterwards I’ll say what I think.”
Trump, 70, and Francis, 80, could hardly be more different as people, too. The child of an Italian immigrant to Argentina, Francis has made humility a distinguishing feature of his papacy. He refused to live in the opulent Apostolic Palace, choosing a guest house for church officials near St. Peter’s Basilica instead; he takes his meals in its canteen.
Trump, born and raised wealthy, has sought to make his personal brand synonymous with opulence.
The two men have clashed in the past. In February 2016, the Pope told reporters that someone like thencandidate Trump “who thinks only about building walls, wherever it is, and not of building bridges, is not Christian.”
Trump retorted: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.” Trump also said that if Daesh attacked the Vatican, “the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened.”
Despite their differences, the pope and Trump would gain nothing from a confrontational encounter, the Vatican official said.
Trump will want to emerge from the meeting “able to say that he’s got a good relationship with the Pope and, thereby, to sort of undercut the direct and implicit criticisms from Pope Francis that came during the campaign and that may come in the future as the pope takes a position on one or another policy initiatives that the administration rolls out,” said Jeffrey Rathke, a former State Department official who served in the Obama administration.
The two leaders are expected to discuss issues including global poverty, immigration and climate change on which there will be “legitimate differences,” the Vatican official said.
“For a U.S. president, visiting the pope is an absolute must,” said papal biographer Ivereigh.
“Trump’s meeting is inevitable, not just because about 20 per cent of Americans describe themselves as Catholics, but also because of the Vatican’s position on the world stage.”