Focusing on peace
As president’s nine-day international journey continues, Trump exchanges gifts with pope, discusses terrorism in private meeting
VATICAN CITY» Handshakes, gifts, friendly small talk and big hopes for peace. 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 30minute 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, 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.”
“I think you’ll enjoy them. I hope you do,” Trump said.
The pope’s other gifts could be taken as offering a more pointed message, although Francis is known to give them to other visitors, too.
He gave Trump three bound papal documents that he has written that 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, fossilfuel-based industrial model that harms the poor the most.
Trump has expressed skepticism about global warming and possible causes, and he has promised changes to spur more coal and oil production in the U.S.
The president is midway through a grueling nine-day, maiden international journey that has included Middle East stops in the cradles of Islam and Judaism. In Saudi Arabia, he addressed dozens of Arab leaders and urged them to fight extremists at home and isolate Iran, which he depicted as a menace to the region. In Israel, Trump reaffirmed his commitment to strong ties with the longtime U.S. ally and urged Israelis and the Palestinians to work harder toward peace.
He arrived late Wednesday in Brussels. While Trump received warm welcomes in Riyadh and Jerusalem, the reception could grow cooler now that he’s reached Europe, site of widespread protests after his election.
Climate-change activists projected the words “Planet Earth First” on the massive dome of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Tuesday night, and protests are expected when he attends a NATO meeting in Brussels and a G-7 gathering in Sicily.