President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he will attend the funeral of Pope Francis, who died Monday aged 88.
Despite heaping praise on the late Catholic leader, Trump’s far-right policies often led to a difficult relationship with Francis.
Just before the pontiff passed away, tensions between the Vatican and the Trump administration simmered after what was described as “lightning meeting” with Vice President J.D. Vance.
“The pope has no great love for neither Vance nor Trump,” a source close to the pope said, ahead of the meeting with Vance told Politico. “He has positions which are against the social doctrine of the Church, for migration, and human rights, and so on.”
Francis made welcoming and protecting migrants a key element of his nearly 12-year papacy, previously criticising Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and plans to cut foreign aid and domestic welfare programmes.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Pope Francis weighed in on Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the US–Mexico border, questioning his alleged Christian values.
In response to a specific question about Trump’s immigration policies, Francis remarked: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.” He added: “This is not in the gospel”.
Ahead of Trump’s second inauguration in January, Francis took the unusual step of publicly condemning proposed immigration “raids,” describing the plans as a “disgrace” — a rare departure from his typically cautious and apolitical public tone.
The following month, the pope addressed the issue again in an open letter to the U.S. bishops, warning that Trump’s immigration agenda posed a “major crisis” for the United States.
A date for the funeral has not yet been announced, and it was not immediately clear if Trump’s Rome visit would be combined with one previously announced during his meeting last week with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Trump ordered US flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House, and at federal properties across the globe.
“He was a good man, he worked hard and loved the world,” the president said at a White House event marking Easter.
Trump had earlier posted on social media: “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!”
Biden, who was only the second Roman Catholic to serve as US president, hailed the late pope as “unlike any who came before him.”
“Pope Francis will be remembered as one of the most consequential leaders of our time and I am better for having known him,” Biden wrote on X alongside a picture of him and the pontiff.
Francis also had vastly differing opinions on Israel’s brutal war on Gaza than those of both the Trump and Biden administrations. The Catholic leader was one of the first global voices to call for a ceasefire, while the US continued to block a truce and arm Israel with weapons of war.
Since Israel launched its military campaign on Gaza in October 2023, Pope Francis kept close contact with the enclave’s small Christian population, calling every night and speaking to priests and parishioners alike.
In his final public message, delivered for Easter, Francis called for a ceasefire in Gaza, the release of captives, and urgent aid for the “starving people who aspire to a future of peace”.
