In the shadow of a hideous terrorism attack in the British city of Manchester, President Trump wrapped up his visit to the Holy Land and moved on to the Holy See.
Both Pope Francis and Trump offered their condolences to the victims: Trump condemned the "evil losers" behind the assault that claimed the lives of 22 people, including children, at a pop concert, while the pontiff issued a statement saying he was "deeply saddened" by the "barbaric attack."
But the buildup to the meeting between the two men in Rome on Wednesday has focused less on their shared sentiments and more on the many things that divide them. In myriad ways, Trump and Francis are almost diametric opposites.
Consider the pontiff's compassion for migrants and refugees. Well before the West's far right scare-mongered about the "hordes" of migrants arriving at Europe's gates, Francis was raising awareness of the plight of asylum seekers drowning in the Mediterranean. He washed the feet of migrants trapped in temporary camps and personally transported Syrian refugees to safety in his own plane.
Trump, meanwhile, built his political campaign around antipathy to immigrants and refugees. He remains bent on building a vast wall along the border with Mexico, no matter the reams of data suggesting the structure is not necessary.
On a 2016 visit to Mexico, Francis indirectly attacked Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail. "A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not about building bridges, is not a Christian," Francis said. Trump fired back, calling the pope's remarks "disgraceful."
Francis has also taken aim at the brand of right-wing ultra-nationalism that helped fuel Trump's political rise as well as that of other far-right parties in Europe. Speaking in Cairo last month, he said that the pursuit of peace was not helped by "demagogic forms of populism."
The pope is no defender of the European status quo. In 2014, he delivered a lengthy rebuke of capitalism and neoliberalism at the European Parliament, pointing to economic forces that deepened inequality and threatened to sap the continent of its vitality. He seemed to specifically object to the excesses of high finance.
"We encounter certain rather selfish lifestyles, marked by an opulence which is no longer sustainable and frequently indifferent to the world around us, and especially to the poorest of the poor," Francis said.
Compare that with Trump's gilded mansions and country clubs, his ostentatious casinos and jet-setting lifestyle. Consider, also, the White House's latest proposed federal budget, which analysts say would gut the social safety net for the poor while lining the pockets of the mega-rich. (More on that later in the newsletter.)
The pope wrote a whole encyclical, or papal letter, calling for global action on climate change — and chided climate skeptics for their "denial" and the international community for its relative inaction. Trump ranks among the skeptics; he seems determined to roll back years of environmental regulations on big business while also harboring plans to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accords.
And while Trump fixates on American military strength and its capacity for unrivaled devastation, Francis embraces the cause of peace at every turn.
During a speech to Congress in 2015, Francis hailed Dorothy Day, an early-20th-century American pacifist, and commended her "social activism" and "passion for justice." Trump's right-wing equivalents at the time deemed Day a communist sympathizer, nicknaming her "Moscow Mary." FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described her as a "very erratic and irresponsible person."
When the United States dropped a gigantic bomb on a suspected militant base in Afghanistan, boosters of the Trump administration celebrated the act as evidence of a new president who is willing to unleash the full potential of the American military on its enemies. But Francis was aghast at the breathless media reports that dubbed the weapon the "Mother of All Bombs."
"I was ashamed when I heard the name," he later told an audience of students at the Vatican. "A mother gives life and this one gives death, and we call this device a mother? What is happening?"
Trump
speaks to sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford in
Newport News, Virginia, on March 2.
"Should they pull off a congenial discussion, it could serve as a much-needed diplomatic salve for the American leader," The Washington Post's Anthony Faiola and Julie Zauzmer wrote. "A gaffe, meanwhile, could quickly stoke fresh controversy for a president facing a mounting crisis at home."
Clergy in Rome have their own concerns.
"The Vatican is just concentrating to see how and if there will even be a final communique," said Marco Politi, a Rome-based Vatican watcher, to my colleagues. "For me, this meeting is only the beginning of what is becoming a difficult and complex relationship between the Holy See and the American presidency."
