U.S. President Donald Trump and Pope Francis held a 30-minute meeting at the Vatican on Wednesday, underscoring the emphasis during the first presidential foreign trip on the three Abrahamic (monotheistic) faiths.
The two men, meting for the first time, shook hands. The pope appeared somber. The president grinned.
“It’s a very great honor,” Trump said to the leader of the Roman Catholic Church after they were seated in the pope’s private study.
The pontiff did not respond while reporters were in the room and he did not smile.
After the president’s private meeting with the pope in the Apostolic Palace there was a brief, expanded audience for the other members of the U.S. delegation. It included First Lady Melania Trump, (clad in a black lace tea-length dress and black lace veil), Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner (who are both now official advisors to the president).
That encounter included an exchange of gifts.
"This is a gift for you. These are books from Martin Luther King. I think you will enjoy them," the president told the pope.
The pope gave Trump what he said was a medal by a Roman artist. He said it's an olive which is a symbol of peace.
“We can use peace,” the president replied.
“I signed it personally for you,” the pope told Trump.
“That's so beautiful,” the president replied.
The pope then also gave the president three books on the topics of family, the joy of the gospel and “care of our common home, the environment.”
“Well, I'll be reading them,” Trump promised the pope.
The mood initially appeared stiff, according to the few reporters allowed to witness the event firsthand. They noted the pontiff was rather stone-faced at the beginning but later during the gift exchange the mood lightened considerably.
The two men had a clash of words last year when Trump, as a presidential candidate, touted his plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The first Jesuit pope said anyone who thinks of building walls instead of bridges “is not Christian,” a comment that Trump called “disgraceful.”
The evening before the audience a top Vatican official, Cardinal Peter Turkson, who is from Ghana, took to social media to note that both the president and the pope are reaching out to the Islamic world to exorcise it of religious violence.
“One offers peace of dialogue, the other security of arms,” he said on Twitter, apparently referencing the $110 billion weapons deal the U.S. president concluded with Saudi Arabia days ago.
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