President Donald Trump offered on Monday brief condolences for the death of Pope Francis, but the two men faced themselves repeatedly, even from the Trump presidential campaign in 2016, on how to treat migrants.
“He was a good man, he worked hard and loved the world,” Trump said as he commented on the Easter Easter roll of the White House, where he announced that he had ordered us with low flags to the half looser in his honor.
Trump’s first response to the Pope’s death came in a brief position in his conservative social networks on Monday: “Rest in La Paz Pope Francis! May God bless him and all who loved him!”
Taxes of the leaders around the world were paid, including the predecessors of Trump, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Biden called Pope Francis “one of the most consistent leaders of our time” and Obama congratulated him as a “rare leader who made us want to be better people.”
As he had often done over the years, the day before he died, Pope Francis advocated migrants in his direction of Easter Sunday.
“How much contempt is sometimes agitated towards vulnerable, marginalized and migrants!” said. “On this day, I would like everyone to wait again and relive our confidence in others, including those that are different from ourselves or that come from distant lands, bringing unknown customs, ways of life and ideas.”
In 2016, Pope Francis criticized Trump for his promise to build a wall along the border between the United States and Mexico.
“A person who only thinks of building walls, wherever they are and not build bridges, is not a Christian,” said Pope Francis while on a trip to Mexico. “This is not in the Gospel.”
Trump responded at that time that he was “proud to be a Christian” and that “no leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question the religion or faith of another man.” He also suggested that the Mexican government had used it as a “pawn” and convinced him to comment.
“If the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows that it is the final trophy of ISIS, I can promise that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump had been president because this would not have happened,” Trump said then.
Ivanka Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and President Donald Trump meet Pope Francis during a meeting on May 24, 2017, in the Vatican.
EVAN VUCCI/AP
This year, one day before Trump was inaugurated for his second term, Pope Francis commented on his plan to carry out mass deportations.
“If it is true, it will be a shame, because it makes the miserable poor who have nothing pay the invoice for the imbalance. It will not. This is not the way to solve things,” he said.
Then, in February, the Vatican launched the text of a letter from Pope Francis to US bishops, mainly about his work by helping migrants.
“I have closely followed the main crisis that takes place in the United States with the beginning of a mass deportation program,” the Pope wrote.
“The conscience formed correctly cannot fail to issue a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal state of some migrants with criminality. At the same time, one must recognize the right of a nation to defend themselves and keep the safe communities of those who have committed crimes or serious by the country or before arriving,” he added.
“That said, 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 whole families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and grafic,” he told Us Bishops.
Pope Francis meets the American vice president JD Vance on Easter Sunday at the Vatican, on April 20, 2025.
Vatican media through Reuters
Vice President JD Vance met Pope Francis on Sunday before the Pontiff did what his last public appearance would be.
“I leaned on the death of Pope Francis. My heart is with the millions of Christians around the world who loved him. I was happy to see him yesterday, although he was obviously very sick,” Vance wrote in X. The vice president also shared a homily of the Pope during the first days of the pandemic of the coronavirus who said he discovered “quite beautiful.”
The previous day, Vance met with the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. The Vatican press office described the discussion as “cordial” although he said that “there was an exchange of opinions” about international politics “with special attention to migrants, refugees and prisoners.”
Trump visited the Vatican in 2017 with the first lady Melania Trump, and at that time he described him as an “honor of a lifetime to meet” with Pope Francis.
Trump announced on his social networks platform on Monday afternoon that he and the first lady Melania will go to the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome: “We hope to be there!”
Asked by a journalist who thought would be the legacy of Pope Francis, Trump replied: “He is a very good man who loved, loved the world, and especially loved people who were having a bad time. And that is good with me.”
