The funeral for Pope Francis was intended to be a stripped down affair to honor the simplicity of the man. Instead the attendance of US President Donald Trump has turned it into a high-profile stage for international diplomacy at a moment of geopolitical turmoil.
With the world in the throes of a
trade war, markets gyrating wildly and a truce between Ukraine and Russia hanging in the balance, everyone from Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy to Britain’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron is seeking a quick audience with the mercurial American leader on his first trip abroad since the inauguration.
The brief sojourn, with its blend of religious ceremony and political deal-making, recalls the setting for the reopening of
Notre Dame cathedral back in December. Trump’s appearance at that too was a reason for many to rush to Paris for some fly-by negotiating. In Rome, Trump joins 50 heads of state who along with paying their respects to Francis are hoping to cross paths with the president in St. Peter’s Basilica or on the sidelines.
Before heading to Rome, Trump indicated he was up for it though he is on the ground briefly, so the window to conduct any business is narrow.
“I’d like to meet them all,” Trump said Thursday. “That would be nice. I’d like to take care of all of them, but we have many of them there, and they all want to meet, and they want to meet about trade, and we are making some great inroads and great deals.”
For Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni it’s an opportunity to firmly establish herself as one of
main conduits to Trump, perhaps by orchestrating a three-way chat on trade with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president who Trump hasn’t yet spoken to since coming to power.
Meloni
visited him just over a week ago in Washington — where he heaped praise on her — and she later hosted Vice President JD Vance, a fellow Catholic and recent convert, who also saw Pope Francis a day before he died.
It’s not always clear what you get in return even when Trump likes you or if you flatter him — in the end almost no one was spared from being slapped with tariffs. In the case of Trump-friendly Javier Milei, it’s yielded some
dividends for Argentina with the approval of an IMF loan, in spite of the red flags raised inside the lender of last resort.
One mourner at the funeral who might not be seeking out Trump is Joe Biden. A devout Catholic who met with Francis a
number of times — including when Meloni made the unprecedented gesture of bringing the pope to the Group of Seven by the Adriatic Sea — the former president is often blamed by Trump for everything from wars to economic woes.
With so many in Rome, one conspicuous absence is Russia’s Vladimir Putin — who did evade tariff punishment and will host Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and China’s Xi Jinping in Moscow for the Victory Day Parade on May 9. Back in 2019, Trump was flattered to have been asked to attend what amounts to a flashy celebration of Russian military might on the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
This time, the circumstances aren’t quite aligning. The US president is in a hurry to declare a diplomatic win by brokering the end of the war in Ukraine and in recent days has vented rare criticism of Russia with the 100-day milestone of his second presidency fast approaching.
Leftist Lula will be in Rome — carefully avoiding his libertarian arch foe Milei as he’s been doing now in various gatherings. It’s unlikely Xi will make a last-minute decision to attend. The two economic giants are talking
past each other, with Trump insisting there are talks ongoing on trade while Beijing denies it. The tension has rattled investors.
A meeting on the Vatican sidelines would be of huge consequence — and also awkward. The Holy See doesn’t have formal relations with China even if it does with Taiwan. There has been some rapprochement with Beijing and Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te won’t be attending, though former Vice President Chen Chien-Jen will be there to represent the
island.
One open question is if Trump will use the moment to offer any suggestion on who should next lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
A conclave – a gathering of Cardinals to select the next pope – will meet in the coming weeks and the secretive process is famously hard to predict.
Father James Martin, editor at large at America Magazine, a Jesuit publication, said that it is normal for those gatherings to consider the global politics of the times as they make their
choice.
“It’s natural for the college of cardinals to consider the signs of the times, that is what is going on in the world,” he said. “So broadly speaking they will be considering the geopolitical situation.”
The relationship between Trump and Francis was never easy, punctuated by clashes over issues like immigration and climate change that underlined the deep fissures between conservative and liberal Catholics in the US. Earlier this year, Francis criticized the Trump administration’s migration policies, which include forced deportations.
So far, Trump has not weighed in on who should be
next. At the White House this week, he said of Francis: “He loved the world, and he especially loved people that were having a hard time — and that’s good with me.”
Michael Moreland, a professor of law and religion at Villanova University, is of the view that any attempt to influence the conclave with “any campaigning or lobbying from the outside would risk backfiring.”
Trump, who heavily wooed the religious right, won a majority of Catholic voters in the 2024 presidential election. He was supported by conservative Catholics and has a number of Catholics serving in his administration, including Vance.
Vance
himself was asked about the direction he’d like the next pope to take the church but declined to answer: “I won’t pretend to give guidance to the cardinals on who they should select as the next pope. We’ve got plenty of issues to focus on in the United States.”
It remains to be seen if Trump will weigh in. Francis himself was known for going off script from time to time, and not without consequences. His defense of the Palestinian cause, criticism of Israel and his daily calls to a church in Gaza compelled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order ambassadors to delete social media posts expressing their condolences.
The ceremony will start at 10 a.m. on Saturday, attracting some 250,000 people. And despite all the high-profile guests and the significance of the occasion, it was Francis’s firm desire to do away with all the pomp and grandeur that usually comes with the passing of a pope.
His final request, left in a will compiled in 2022, was simple: to be buried in naked soil in a single wooden coffin engraved with one Latin word: “Franciscus.”
