Trump meets Pope
VATICAN CITY: US President Donald Trump met Pope Francis, one of his most highprofile critics, at the Vatican yesterday and after an exchange of gifts he promised he would not forget the pontiff’s message during their halfhour discussion.
Trump and the Pope have expressed opposing views on issues such as immigration and climate change and the two men exchanged sharp words during the presidential campaign last year.
Trump looked uncomfortable as he entered a small lift taking him to the third floor of the Apostolic Palace, to the Pope’s private study.
Following behind Trump were his wife Melania, daughter Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, a top White House aide, national security adviser H. R. McMaster and adviser Hope Hicks.
The Pope smiled faintly as he greeted Trump outside the study.
Trump, seeming subdued, said ‘‘it is a great honour.’’
The two men then posed for photographs. The Pope kept a stern face while Trump beamed for the cameras.
At the end of the private encounter the Pope, smiling and looking far more relaxed, gave the president a small sculptured olive tree symbolising peace. Trump thanked him and said, ‘‘we can use peace’’.
Speaking in Spanish through an interpreter, the Pope also gave Trump a signed copy of the message he delivered at the last
World Peace Day and three of his major writings including his 2015 encyclical on the need to protect the environment.
‘‘Well, I’ll be reading them,’’ Trump said.
He gave the Pope a boxed set of writings by Martin Luther King.
As Trump left he told his host, ‘‘thank you. I won’t forget what you said.’’
Trump’s meeting with Pope Francis, his third stop on a nineday foreign tour due to end on Saturday, was part of his world tour of religions after meeting leaders of Muslim nations in Saudi Arabia and visiting holy sites in Jerusalem.
While his talks in Saudi Arabia and Israel were mostly friendly, the meeting between the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the thricemarried, bluntspoken Trump had the potential to be a little more confrontational.
The Pope said last year a man who thinks about building walls and not bridges is ‘‘not Christian’’, a sharp reprimand for Trump’s vow to build a wall along the US border with Mexico.
Trump said it was ‘‘disgraceful’’ of the Argentineborn Pope, who represents just over half of the world’s two billion Christians, to question his faith.
‘‘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,’’ Trump said during the campaign.