One of Pope Francis’ dying wishes, as proclaimed by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re at his funeral on Saturday in Rome, where hundreds of thousands of mourners came to honor the “People’s Pope,” was that leaders of the world build bridges, and not walls.
President Donald Trump, who launched his political career, in part, on the phrase “Build The Wall,” sat in the front row.
“Pope Francis incessantly raised his voice, imploring peace and calling for reason and honest negotiation to find possible solutions,” Cardinal Re said as he delivered the homily. “‘Build bridges, not walls,’ was an exhortation he repeated many times.”
Aboard Air Force One on his way to Italy on Friday, Trump told reporters that he was attending the funeral “out of respect” for Francis, adding, “I won the Catholic vote.” And since arriving in Italy, Trump has been documenting his trip on Truth Social, sharing videos of him walking toward his seat at the funeral and standing in front of the late pope’s simple cypress coffin.
The president, along with his wife Melania Trump, was one of several world leaders who were seated on the stairs of St. Peter’s Basilica for what The New York Times reports was a “solemn and majestic funeral.” Former president Joe Biden and former first lady Jill Biden, Britain’s Prince William, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, along with other global heads, were also in attendance.
Prior to Saturday morning’s service, President Trump sat down with Zelensky at the Vatican—the pair’s first meeting since their televised clash in the Oval Office in February. White House spokesman Stephen Cheung called it a “very productive discussion,” but gave no details. In a separate social media post, Zelensky said they had a “Good meeting.”
“We discussed a lot one-on-one. Hoping for results on everything we covered. Protecting lives of our people. Full and unconditional ceasefire. Reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out. Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results,” the Ukrainian president wrote, thanking and tagging Trump.
The president and Pope Francis have clashed several times since Trump’s first bid for the White House nearly a decade ago.
In 2016, the pope criticized Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the US-Mexico border, telling reporters at the time that, “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.” Trump quickly fired back, saying, “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”
“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,” he said in a statement.
Then, when the pair met during a 2017 trip to the Vatican, the president claimed they had a “fantastic meeting.” This interaction gave rise to the viral photo of Trump and Francis standing next to each other with very different expressions.
Fast forward to Trump’s second presidency, and the pope again made a rare rebuke of the United States’ leadership. In a public letter from February to Catholic bishops in the United States, Francis described the program of mass deportations as a “major crisis.”
Deporting migrants who often come from difficult situations, Francis wrote, violates the “dignity of many men and women, and of entire families,” adding that he had “followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” and believes that any policy built on force “begins badly and will end badly.”
Cardinal Re’s homily on Saturday highlighted the pope’s insistence on traveling to places where people were experiencing displacement and insecurity about where they could live and how they would feed their families.
“His gestures and exhortations in favor of refugees and displaced persons are countless,” Re said. “He established direct contact with individuals and peoples, eager to be close to everyone, with a marked attention to those in difficulty, giving himself without measure, especially to the marginalized, the least among us. He was a Pope among the people.”
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The post “Build Bridges, Not Walls”: Pope Francis’ Funeral Sermon Offered Thinly Veiled Reminder to President Donald Trump appeared first on Vanity Fair.
