President Trump announced this week that he and First Lady Melania Trump will be traveling to the Vatican for the funeral of Pope Francis, who died Monday at age 88.
Pope Francis became pope in 2013, just two years before Donald Trump started running for president. So the two were often intertwined, with the Pontiff critical of Trump’s policies.
Dear God. Everyone knows Pope Francis had little love for Trump—he wouldn’t want him anywhere near his funeral.
However, in true Trump fashion, he makes it all about him.
Also… who the hell looks forward to a funeral? Seriously. 🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/EB0RMOi3HP
— Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) April 22, 2025
According to NPR, Trump once said of Pope Francis, “The new Pope is a humble man, very much like me, which probably explains why I like him so much!” But before long, they were at odds, with Francis critical of Trump’s proposal in the 2016 campaign to build a wall along the border with Mexico.
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“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” the pope said at the time.
Trump fired back, raising the prospect of ISIS attacking the Vatican.
“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,” he said.
After Trump’s first election, the two leaders met at the Vatican:
Look at their faces. pic.twitter.com/0t84cBX8bZ
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 24, 2017
More recently, the Pope was sharply critical of the second Trump Administration’s immigration and deportation policies, although the Pope did meet with Vice President J.D. Vance at the Vatican the day before their death.
“One spurned the traditional red shoes and luxurious apostolic palace for religious simplicity, living humbly in a Vatican City guesthouse. The other made a brand of his own name and wrapped nearly everything he touched, from New York City skyscrapers to the Oval Office, in a gilded sheen,” a New York Times analysis this week said. “The relationship between the two was defined by the chasm between them, frequently bursting into public view in extraordinary clashes that revealed radically opposing visions of how to lead and of what kind of world they hoped to create.”
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
