Making the first foreign trip of his second term, Trump was alongside dozens of leaders from other countries keen to bend his ear over a trade war he unleashed, among other subjects.
Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden also attended the funeral, alongside UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Lebanon’s Joseph Aoun.
Israel – angered by Francis’ criticism of its conduct in Gaza – was sending only its Holy See ambassador. China, which does not have formal relations with the Vatican, did not send any representative at all.
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Francis died of a stroke and heart failure less than a month after he left hospital where he had battled pneumonia for five weeks.
He loved nothing more than being among his flock, taking selfies with the faithful and kissing babies, and made it his mission to visit the peripheries, rather than mainstream centres of Catholicism.
His last public act, the day before his death, was an Easter Sunday blessing of the entire world, ending his papacy as he had begun it – with an appeal to protect the “vulnerable, the marginalised and migrants”.
The Jesuit chose to be named after Saint Francis of Assisi, saying he wanted “a poor Church for the poor”, and eschewed fine robes and the papal palace.
Instead, the Church’s 266th pope lived at a Vatican guesthouse and chose to be interred in his favourite Rome church, Santa Maria Maggiore – the first pontiff to be buried outside the Vatican walls in more than a century.
