Why Melania wore head covering to the Vatican
DURING the Trumps’ meeting with Pope Francis on Wednesday, Melania Trump wore a long-sleeved Dolce & Gabbana black dress and a black veil, following a tradition of many US first ladies before her to wear black when meeting the pope. The other women in attendance, including US President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, wore similar dresses and veils.
There was some confusion, however, over why she wore a veil, or a mantilla, at the Vatican while she didn’t wear a headscarf in the Muslim country of Saudi Arabia.
Foreign dignitaries typically follow a dress code when visiting the Vatican, although that dress code started to relax under Pope Benedict XVI, said Rocco Palmo, editor of Whispers in the Loggia, a site on church news and politics.
Men typically wear a black suit, white shirt and black tie.
Only Catholic queens and the princess of Monaco can wear white in the presence of the pope, Palmo said.
Women tend to wear a veil as a throwback to Catholic women who wore them in church before Vatican II in the 1960s.
Francis has relaxed the expectation that bishops wear cassocks when meeting him so now they wear clerical collars.
And Francis f amously stopped wearing the red shoes of his predecessor.
“It’s been part of his message of simplicity,” Palmo said.
Queen Elizabeth II wore a black dress with a veil under her crown several times when she visited the Vatican in previous decades. However, in a 2014 visit, she wore a purple dress and hat.
And if the wife of a US presi- dent meets the pope outside the Vatican, the expectations are different.
Former first lady Michelle Obama wore a blue dress to meet the pope at the airport in Washington DC in 2015.
“The last place the White House would want to snub is the Vatican,” Palmo said.
“Presidents who win the white Catholic vote win the White House.
“If she hadn’t worn a veil, people would’ve been reading into it.”
In Saudi Arabia, Muslim women are said to be required to wear a headscarf, but foreigners are not required to adhere to the same dress code.
Some prominent women have worn a headscarf for official visits to Saudi Arabia, but it isn’t necessarily considered an insult to the country’s leaders to not wear one.
Like Trump, for mer first ladies Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush also visited.
“I think people are reading into it and misinterpreting it,” said Jane Hampton Cook, a presidential and first lady historian.
“The pope is the head of a church. The king of Saudi Arabia is the head of state. There is a difference between seeing a religious leader versus showing respect to a king who’s the head of state.”
And while Trump did not wear a headscarf, she dressed in loose clothing with her arms and legs fully covered, fitting for Saudi Arabia’s standards for modesty, Cook said.
Trump’s visit was not with religious leaders or at a house of worship, and while Saudi women cover their hair in public, many Muslim women around the world do not.
Some have heralded Western politicians’ decisions not to wear a headscarf in Saudi Arabia as revolutionary.
Michelle Obama’s 2015 visit to the country with her head uncovered was called a “bold political statement” and one that sparked a backlash.
At the time, Trump criticised Obama’s decision by tweeting: “Many people are saying it was wonderful that Mrs Obama refused to wear a scarf in Saudi Arabia, but they were insulted. We have enuf enemies.” (sic)
Some tweets show photos of Obama and Clinton wearing a headscarf next to Trump not wearing a headscarf, but those photos of the former first ladies were taken in different Muslim countries (Obama was in Indonesia and Clinton was in Pakistan), not in Saudi Arabia. – The Washington Post