President Donald Trump seems to have put aside his almost decade-long beef with Pope Francis by paying his respects to the late pope.
The president posted on Truth Social Monday the simple message: “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!”
After squeezing in a post attacking “Mr. Too Late” and “major loser” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates, Trump shared another, longer message announcing that the U.S. flag would be flown at half-staff until sunset on the day of the pope’s burial.
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Trump emphasized that the decision was “a mark of respect for the memory of His Holiness Pope Francis, by the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America.”
He stated how the half-mast order would apply to the White House and “upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions.”
This order would also apply to U.S. “embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.”
The White House also posted a photo of the president and the first lady with the pope, as well as one of JD Vance and the pope from his visit to the Vatican Sunday.
The pope and Trump were still feuding as recently as February, when Pope Francis called the president out on his mass deportations program in a letter to U.S. bishops.
“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 of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” he wrote.
“Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity,” he added. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.”
Trump initially praised Pope Francis when he was elected as the 266th pope in 2013, posting on X, formerly Twitter: “The new Pope is a humble man, very much like me, which probably explains why I like him so much!”
Yet the relations between the two grew tense once Trump embarked on his 2016 “Make America Great Again” election campaign, calling for a U.S.-Mexico border wall to be erected in order to stop people from crossing into the country.
The pope told reporters in 2016 that if what Trump had said on immigration at the time was true, then he was “not Christian.”
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel,” the pope said.
Prior to the pope’s comments being made public, Trump had said how he admired the pope’s attitude and independence, and that he respected “the fact that he sees both sides.”
Yet the president quickly changed his tune, saying in a statement: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful… No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith.”
“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 added.
Though the president visited Pope Francis in 2017, where he was beaming next to a sour looking pope, the relationship between the two remained strained.
At the time, Trump was trying to gain the votes of evangelical Christian leaders, which he ended up achieving despite some errors along the way, like admitting he never asked God for forgiveness.
But at the White House Easter Egg Roll Monday, the president claimed that “we’re bringing religion back in America.”
