The last time President Donald Trump visited the Vatican, a man who generally seems to believe only in material goods appeared to be touched by the power of moral good.
“He is something, he’s really good,” Trump said after meeting with Pope Francis in May of 2017. “We had a fantastic meeting and we had a fantastic tour, it was really beautiful.”
The lure of good over goods may at least partly explain why Trump is now heading back to Rome for Francis’ funeral even though he must know he will not be the center of attention.
MAGA, in the global and historical context of such an event, becomes much closer to mini than mega. And a would-be potentate who rhapsodizes over gold will look only more shallow before the simple wood coffin of a determinately humble pontiff. The rite will end with a truly great man consigned to a simple tomb marked “Franciscus.”
The first time Trump saw the pope was in September 2015, when he stepped onto a balcony of the garish Trump Tower with his son, Eric, to watch Francis arrive in an open white Jeep at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral just down Fifth Avenue. Tens of thousands of people below, many of them Hispanic, cheered “Francisco! Francisco!”
After Francis disappeared inside, some of the crowd spotted a figure gazing down from Trump Tower. They recognized that figure as the presidential candidate who spoke of building a wall along the southern border to keep out Mexican “rapists and criminals.”
“Feo! Feo!,“ the crowd began to shout, that being Spanish for “Ugly! Ugly!”
Francis himself had something to say about Trump in February 2016, as he continued to seek votes by stoking fear of migrants.
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said. “This is not the Gospel.”
Trump countered Gospel with spiel.
“If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened,” Trump declared in a statement. “ISIS would have been eradicated unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.”
Trump added a touch of conspiracy theory.
“The Mexican government and its leadership has made many disparaging remarks about me to the Pope, because they want to continue to rip off the United States, both on trade and at the border, and they understand I am totally wise to them,” he said. “The Pope only heard one side of the story – he didn’t see the crime, the drug trafficking and the negative economic impact the current policies have on the United States. He doesn’t see how Mexican leadership is outsmarting President Obama and our leadership in every aspect of negotiation.”
Trump then went after Francis directly.
“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” he said. “I am proud to be a Christian and as President I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened, unlike what is happening now, with our current President.”
But Trump pulled back, blaming some unspecified wrongdoers.
“They are using the Pope as a pawn and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing so, especially when so many lives are involved and when illegal immigration is so rampant.”
The Spiel According to Trump prevailed and he became president. He seemed to be seeking to demonstrate he was a good guy nonetheless when he visited the Vatican with Melania and his daughter Ivanka during his first month as president.
Pope, president, first lady and first daughter posed for a photo. Francis looked appropriately somber, having presented Trump with an English translation of a pontifical treatise on the importance of addressing climate change. Trump beamed at the camera and gushed about the pope, at least for the moment seeming to appreciate the power of actual good.
But despite proudly declaring his Christianity, Trump’s “zero tolerance” border policy in 2018 was so callously unchristian that the administration separated as many as 2,000 migrant children from their parents in just six weeks. Francis was among the many who condemned it. He termed it “immoral… contrary to our Catholic values.”
Such cruelties and a moral blindness accompanying Trump’s penchant for goods over good alienated enough people that he was defeated in 2020. Over the next four years, the border problem remained and Joe Biden was slow in addressing it. That and a range of culture-war issues gave Trump an opportunity to fearmonger his way back to the White House.
Immediately into his second administration, Trump commenced mass deportations that he had promised during the campaign. As Trump sought to do that without due process, Francis issued a Feb. 10, 2025, letter to U.S. Catholic bishops that was made public.
“The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” the pope declared.
Without naming him, Francis took issue with JD Vance’s attempt to justify the crackdown on migrants by citing a medieval Catholic theological concept, “ordo amoris,” (“order of love” or “order of charity.”) Vance, a recent convert to Catholicism who does not seem to understand that being a practicing Catholic is not just going to Mass, described the concept as “basic common sense” in that you have a moral obligation to assist those close to home before “a stranger who lives thousands of miles away.”
Francis felt otherwise.
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” Francis wrote in the letter.
He added, “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
In what some of the faithful might call a “God-incidence,” Vance was at the Vatican on Easter. He briefly exchanged greetings with an ailing Francis, who gave him chocolate Easter eggs for his children.
After Vance departed, Francis went onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. A papal assistant read aloud a last message to all who would listen.
“How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized, and migrants!”
One person who did not heed Francis’s final message was Trump, whose administration continued to press the federal courts to stop interfering with his deportation goals just hours after the pope’s death. That effort was continuing even as Trump stood with Melania and the Easter bunny on the White House balcony and signed an executive order for flags to be flown at half-staff “as a mark of respect for the memory of His Holiness Pope Francis.”
“He was a good man; he worked hard; he loved the world. And it’s an honor to do that,” Trump said.
And Trump announced on Truth Social on Monday that he and Melania will be returning to the Vatican, this time for Francis’ funeral.
“We look forward to being there!” he wrote.
Feo.
The post How Trump Faces Final Reckoning With Francis the Man of Good appeared first on The Daily Beast.
