Pope Francis urged US President Donald Trump to be a peacemaker at their first meeting yesterday after they exchanged sharp words last year, and Trump promised he would not forget the pontiff’s message.
Under clear blue skies, Trump received a tribute from the Swiss Guard in a Vatican courtyard when he arrived.
He entered a small elevator taking him to the third floor of the Apostolic Palace and, after a long ceremonial walk past frescoed corridors, shook the Pope’s hand at the entrance to the private study that the frugal pontiff uses only for official occasions.
Before the door of the wood-lined elevator closed, a Vatican protocol official was heard quipping to the president that it was not “like Trump Tower in New York”. Pope Francis smiled faintly as he greeted Trump outside the study and was not as outgoing as he sometimes is with visiting heads of state.
Trump, seeming subdued, said, “It is a great honour”. Even when the two were sitting at the Pope’s desk in the presence of photographers and reporters, the pope avoided the small talk that usually occurs before the media is ushered out.
The two spoke privately for about 30 minutes with translators.
Both men looked far more relaxed at the end of the private meeting, with the Pope smiling and joking with Trump and his wife Melania.
Pope Francis’s interpreter could be heard translating a comment by the Pope to the First Lady: “What do you give him to eat?”
Pope Francis then gave Trump a small sculptured olive tree and told him through the interpreter that it symbolised peace.
“It is my desire that you become an olive tree to construct peace,” the Pope said, speaking in Spanish.
Trump responded: “We can use peace.”
Pope Francis also gave Trump a signed copy of his 2017 peace message whose title is “Nonviolence — A Style of Politics for Peace”, and a copy of his 2015 encyclical letter on the need to protect the environment from the effects of climate change.
“Well, I’ll be reading them,” Trump said.
During his election campaign, Trump said scientific findings that human economic activity contributed to global warming were a hoax.
As president, he has proposed deep cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency and the elimination of many environmental regulations.
Trump gave the Pope a boxed set of five first-edition books by murdered US civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
As Trump and the Pope said goodbye at the door of the study, Trump told him: “Thank you, thank you.
I won’t forget what you said.”
Asked how the meeting with the Pope went, Trump said: “Great. He is something. He is really good.
We had a fantastic meeting.”
A Vatican statement said the meeting was “cordial” and that the Vatican hoped there could be “serene collaboration” between the US government and the American Catholic Church, including “assistance to immigrants”. The US Catholic Church hierarchy opposes Trump’s attempt to cut federal assistance for cities that give sanctuary to illegal immigrants.
It also opposes his plan to build a wall on the US border with Mexico. The Pope said last year a man who thinks about building walls and not bridges is “not Christian”.
Trump, who was a candidate at the time, responded that it was “disgraceful” of the Argentine-born Pope, who represents just over half of the world’s 2bn Christians, to question his faith.
The meeting with the Pope was the third stop on Trump’s nine-day foreign tour, and part of his world tour of religions after meeting leaders of Muslim nations in Saudi Arabia and visiting holy sites in Jerusalem.
Trump at first did not plan to stop in Rome during his visit to Europe, which some in the Vatican saw as a snub.
When he changed his mind, the Vatican squeezed him in at 8.30am yesterday morning, an unusual day and an unusually early time.
He later flew to Brussels where he was to meet Belgium’s king and prime minister yesterday evening before a day of meetings with European Union and Nato leaders today.
Rome Ivanka Trump spoke with African women who were trafficked into prostitution and discussed ways to tackle the problem at a meeting yesterday in Rome that she described as a “privilege”. The daughter of US President Donald Trump, who as a White House adviser is seen as having increasing influence, met the women while accompanying her father on his first foreign trip.
On her way to the closed-door encounter, Trump said she was looking forward to hearing how the 11 women, originally from Nigeria and the Horn of Africa, had rebuilt their lives.
“(They) are testament to strength, faith, perseverance in the face of unspeakable adversity and challenge,” she said in a leafy courtyard at the headquarters of the Sant’Egidio Christian charity and peace group, which hosted the meeting.
The 35-year-old, who hosted a discussion on human trafficking last week at the White House, spoke for around 45 minutes with the women, some of whom now live under protection from the Italian judiciary after reporting their traffickers to authorities.
“She asked what could be done at the level of government and legislation, and how it would be possible to block human trafficking, particularly regarding women,” said Daniela Pompei, who is in charge of Sant’Egidio’s services for immigrants.
The number of Nigerian women brought to Italy among the migrants rescued from flimsy boats launched by smugglers into the Mediterranean has increased almost eight-fold in the past three years, Sant’Egidio estimates.
At least 80% of the almost 1,600 who arrived in the first three months of 2017 are destined to be forced into prostitution, the group says.
Representatives of Sant’Egidio, which has organised the transfer of Syrian and Iraqi refugees to Italy, also held a separate meeting with Trump at which they discussed how to inform would-be migrants before they left Africa of the risks of trafficking.
Along with her father and stepmother Melania, Trump met Pope Francis yesterday morning, and Pompei said she told the trafficking victims the pontiff was “a great advocate for your stories”.
Queen Mathilde of Belgium, US President Donald Trump, King Philippe - Filip of Belgium and US First Lady Melania Trump stand during a reception at the Royal Palace in Brussels.
