A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre ofDonald Trumpflying to the Vatican this weekend and publicly feuding with international leaders in front of St Peter’s Basilica in the midst of the sombre rituals and rites that will mark thefuneral of Pope Francis.
The US leader’s first international trip of his second term comes at one of the most politically fractious and fraught moments in recent memory, as his “America first” project sets fire to US alliances and trade relationships around the world. Between international tariffs, the wars inUkraineand in Gaza, the Trump team’s open antipathy toward Europe and its hard line on immigration from Central and South America, the papal funeral could prove to be a minefield of international diplomacy.
Trump’s international engagements in the past have set the stage for some of his most explosive confrontations, and he has bristled at world leaders who have criticised him publicly and castigated those he views as insufficiently deferential. Gatherings of world leaders have set the stage for some of his most divisive debates, such as the 2018 G7 meeting that saw him clash with Angela Merkel and other western leaders, or the2017 Nato summitat which he famously shoved past the Montenegrin prime minister to get to the front of a group photograph.
Compounding tensions are theTrump administration’s difficult relationship with the Vatican itself, including Pope Francis’s criticism of Trump’s deportation policies as a“major crisis”and declaration that “builders of walls sow fear”.
Adding to the diplomatic minefield, it was announced on Friday that the former president Joe Biden, whom Trump has repeatedly and continually criticised, would also attend the funeral. Trump’s predecessor is a lifelong Catholic who had metPope Francisseveral times and awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January before leaving the White House.
There is little doubt that Trump’s trip to theVatican– which Italy has encased in a “ring of steel” with Nato jets, snipers and thousands of police at the ready – will provide plenty of white-knuckle moments as the volatile US president navigates controversy amid the pomp and circumstance of a papal funeral.
The funeral will be the first time Trump will be in the same place as Volodymyr Zelenskyy since the US president and JD Vanceberated the Ukrainian leader, with Trump cutting the meeting short as he said that Zelenskyy was “gambling with world war three” and was being “very disrespectful”. Trump has now floated a US recognition of Russian control of Crimea and accused Zelenskyy of delaying a peace deal, testing Zelenskyy’s patience and raising the danger of a new meltdown in bilateral relations.
Then there are the EU leaders, members of a bloc that Trump has said was “formed to screw the United States”. At their head is the EU commission president,Ursula von der Leyen. Despite imposing (and then pausing) a 20% tariff on all goods from the EU, Trump and von der Leyen have not spoken directly or arranged an EU-US summit over the brewing trade war, meaning a meeting on the sidelines of the funeral could be well-timed. Von der Leyen had tacitly criticised the US in print, saying that Europe has “no bros and no oligarchs” and that “the west as we knew it no longer exists.”
But there are some bright spots in the crowd for Trump. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni will attend following a friendly White House visit earlier this month that marked her ascent as one of the key envoys between Europe and the United States. And EU officialshave been saidto believe a summit with the US is within reach, with Trump saying that “there’ll be a trade deal, 100%”. France’s Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer have also hammered out friendly relationships with Trump, and the outgoing Polish president, Andrzej Duda, who was viewed as that country’s best conduit to Trump, will also attend.
Other attenders have also criticised Trump in public, including for his recent imposition of global tariffs that shook world markets, leading him to issue a 90-day pause for nearly all countries except for China. Among them is Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the leftwing leader who said of Trump’s tariffs: “It’s not going to work.” No high-level officials from China will take part in the funeral, curbing the potential for sideline discussions or a standoff over the trade war between Washington and Beijing.
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Vladimir Putin has also decided to deploy a fairly low-level official, the culture minister, Olga Lyubimova, as Russia’s envoy to the funeral, meaning that important contacts over a potential peace deal on the Russian war in Ukraine are unlikely to take place. (Asked whether he was ready to meet with Trump at the Vatican this weekend, Zelenskyy said: “Always.”)
Israel meanwhile will be represented by its ambassador to the Vatican, in contrast to Pope John Paul II’s funeral in 2005, when the country sent a presidential delegation. The apparent snub follows the late Pope Francis’s criticism of the war in Gaza; the Times of Israel quoted an Israeli diplomat calling the delegation a “low point in a spiral”. Pope Francis had repeatedly slammed Israel’s “cruelty” in Gaza and had called the humanitarian situation there “shameful” in January. The absence of a high-level delegation from Israel will reduce the likelihood of substantive discussions over the war following the collapse of the ceasefire negotiated earlier in Trump’s term.
Trump has said that he is planning to meet foreign leaders during the trip, although he has not specified whom. “I have a lot of meetings set up,” Trump said.
Yet he will not be seated front and centre at the funeral. In the areas allocated to foreign leaders, the front rows are designated for Catholic royalty, which will include King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain. Then would come the non-Catholic royalty, including Prince William in the place of his father, King Charles III. And finally come other foreign leaders, including Trump.
The greatest wildcard remains Trump’s own behaviour at the funeral. While he has clashed with European leaders at past summits, he has also toned down his criticism of opponents during public appearances as well. At Jimmy Carter’s funeral in January, Trump sat next to Barack Obama, a rival whom he has publicly attacked for more than a decade, and yet the two traded jokes and smiled while speaking during the service. Then he complained about flags in the US flying at half-mast during the mourning period that coincided with his inauguration.
The US president has never been known for his tact. And as world leaders gather in the Vatican this weekend and millions tune in to follow the funeral, it is Washington that will be sending the elephant in the room.