Trump ‘Very Much’ Looking Forward to Meeting Pope Francis
But the Vatican says there are no developments yet on a visit in May.
President Donald Trump has said he looks “very much forward to meeting the Pope.”
The president, who will be in Taormina, Sicily, in late May for a meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies, was responding to a question during a press conference with Italian premier Paolo Gentiloni at the White House Thursday on whether he would meet Pope Francis while in Italy.
Trump was careful not to say when he would meet the Pope, only that he was looking forward to it.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer was cautious about the possibility of a May visit to reporters on Wednesday, saying “we’re still plenty far away” and “until we have an update, I'm not going to go there.” He then later said at the same briefing that the White House would be reaching out to the Vatican to “see if a meeting, an audience with the Pope can be accommodated.”
“We’ll have further details on that,” he said. “Obviously, we’d be honored to have an audience with His Holiness.”
President Trump will be attending the G7 summit May 26-27, sandwiched between a NATO meeting in Brussels on May 25, and the Memorial Day holiday on May 29, making it difficult to find enough time for a visit to the Vatican.
Both Trump and the Pope have had very public differences in the past, namely on immigration and environment policy, although they have convergent views on life and religious freedom issues.
A Vatican spokesman told the Register April 21 there are no new developments yet on a visit, but sources in Washington say an official announcement is expected soon, and that any meeting would most likely take place immediately after the G7 summit.
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Edward Pentin Edward Pentin is the Register’s Senior Contributor and EWTN News Vatican Analyst. He began reporting on the Pope and the Vatican with Vatican Radio before moving on to become the Rome correspondent for EWTN's National Catholic Register. He has also reported on the Holy See and the Catholic Church for a number of other publications including Newsweek, Newsmax, Zenit, The Catholic Herald, and The Holy Land Review, a Franciscan publication specializing in the Church and the Middle East. Edward is the author of The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates (Sophia Institute Press, 2020) and The Rigging of a Vatican Synod? An Investigation into Alleged Manipulation at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family (Ignatius Press, 2015). Follow him on Twitter at @edwardpentin.
