Papa do preach!
POPE PRESSES PREZ ON PEACE & ENVIRONMENT
THE POPE tried getting through to the President.
Pope Francis urged President Trump to give peace — and environmental protections — a chance Wednesday when the two met at the Vatican in one of the major events of the President’s nine-day foreign tour.
Trump and His Holiness sat down for a 30-minute private morning meeting in the Apostolic Palace — although it is unknown what they discussed through their translators.
But the Pope still made clear what was on his mind. After their sitdown, he presented Trump a medal with an olive branch, a symbol of peace.
“It is my desire that you become an olive tree to construct peace,” Francis said in Spanish.
“We can use peace,” Trump responded.
The Pope also gave the President copies of two of his addresses — one an encyclical from 2015 in which he urged the world to join together in fighting the consequences of climate change; the other from December 2016 of Francis pleading for nonviolence as society rages “a horrifying world war fought piecemeal.”
Trump presented Francis with a first-edition set of five books written by civil rights icon the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
As the two parted ways, Trump told the Pope: “Thank you, thank you. I won’t forget what you said.”
It is not known what Trump was referring to with those words. Neither the White House or the Vatican revealed the conversation that took place during the private chat.
The meeting concluding Trump’s tour of the ancestral homes of the world’s three largest monotheistic religions. It also came a day after the White House unveiled a budget proposal that ramps up military spending, while ordering drastic cuts to federal programs helping the poor, elderly and disabled.
Trump has also been aggressively dismantling environmental and social aid programs since the beginning of his presidency.
A Vatican statement described the meeting as “cordial,” with the Pope warmly receiving Trump’s family and joking with First Lady Melania Trump.
The Pope, though, seemed less enthused in sullen photos with the Trump family. In one photo featuring the pontiff, the First Lady and Ivanka Trump all stood stone-faced, while only the President sported a large grin.
A pool report noted Trump told Francis it was “a great honor” to meet him — but the Argentine-born Pope said nothing in return.
The Pope publicly criticized several of Trump’s policy proposals during the 2016 presidential race against Hillary Clinton — escalating into one of the most surreal conflicts of the contentious campaign.
After Francis in February 2016 suggested Trump was “not Christian” for wanting to build a border wall along Mexico, Trump fired back and said the Pope’s questioning of his faith was “disgraceful.”
Trump went on to meet with Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni in Rome, where Trump said he wanted to hold Russia accountable for its bloody actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, according to a White House report.
Trump, whose campaign is under investigation for suspected collusion with Russia, has been hesitant to criticize the country and its strongman president, Vladimir Putin.
Trump ended his day by traveling to Brussels, the penultimate stop on his travels that have included stops in Saudi Arabia and Israel. Trump called on Arab and Muslim leaders to step up in the fight against terrorism during an address in Saudi Arabia. He called on Israelis and Palestinians to get back to the negotiating table during remarks Tuesday in Jerusalem. In both cases, he stuck closely to his prepared text — a rarity given his normal pattern of veering both off script and sometimes wildly off topic.
He is scheduled Thursday to meet with newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron and other European officials. He finishes up his leg of the trip in Sicily later this week with the Group of 7 summit of the world’s major industrialized democracies.
Trump has been a sharp critic of NATO countries that don’t spend the agreed-upon 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.