As tributes pour in from world wide for Pope Francis, who died aged 88 on Monday, the pontiff is being remembered by many for embracing communities and challenges that the Roman Catholic Church had fastidiously averted beforehand.
Nonetheless, a lot of these points — amongst them the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, local weather change and immigration — additionally put Francis on a collision course with a number of world leaders. The pope’s funeral is on Saturday in St Peter’s Sq., and plenty of world leaders – together with these he locked horns with throughout his papacy – have mentioned they’ll attend it.
So which world leaders did the pope disagree with and what had been the problems that drove these variations?
Donald Trump
Francis battled with america president over the difficulty of migration for almost a decade.
Throughout his first presidential marketing campaign in 2016, Donald Trump promised to construct a “massive, lovely wall” alongside the US border with Mexico.
In February 2016 throughout a visit to Mexico, Francis lamented Trump’s pledge: “An individual who thinks solely about constructing partitions, wherever they might be, and never constructing bridges shouldn’t be Christian.”
Trump hit again in a press release posted on his Fb account, saying: “No chief, particularly a spiritual chief, ought to have the correct to query one other man’s faith or religion.
“I’m proud to be a Christian and as president I cannot permit Christianity to be persistently attacked and weakened.”
Trump added a hypothetical situation involving the ISIL (ISIS) armed group: “If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everybody is aware of is ISIS’s final trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have solely wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president as a result of this might not have occurred,” Trump wrote.
Trump ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 2020 and received in a 3rd run in 2024 on the campaign promise of finishing up “the most important deportation in American historical past”.
Referring to Trump’s plan for mass deportations, Francis mentioned a day earlier than Trump’s inauguration in January: “Whether it is true, will probably be a shame as a result of it makes the poor wretches who don’t have anything pay the invoice for the imbalance. It received’t do. This isn’t the way in which to resolve issues.”
In February, the Vatican launched a letter to US bishops from the pope in regards to the deportations, which Trump had begun after taking workplace on January 20. Whereas acknowledging a rustic’s proper to safeguard itself and hold its communities secure, he remarked: “The act of deporting individuals who in lots of instances have left their very own land for causes of utmost poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or severe deterioration of the atmosphere, damages the dignity of many women and men, and of complete households, and locations them in a state of explicit vulnerability and defenselessness.”
After the pontiff’s dying, Trump posted on his Fact Social platform: “Relaxation in Peace Pope Francis! Could God Bless him and all who beloved him!” Trump additionally mentioned that he would attend the pope’s funeral with first woman Melania Trump.
Mauricio Macri and Javier Milei
Francis left his hometown, Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, in 2013 after he was elected pope. The pontiff made greater than 45 worldwide journeys throughout his papacy, however Argentina was not among the many international locations he visited. Earlier than turning into the pope, he was archbishop after which cardinal in Buenos Aires.
Within the years that adopted, he had tense relations with a number of Argentinian leaders.
Mauricio Macri, who was the centre-right president of Argentina from 2015 to 2019, by no means publicly clashed with the pope, however Francis was broadly believed to be a critic of Macri’s austerity programmes and their influence on the poor in Argentina. When Macri visited the pope on the Vatican in February 2016, the images of their assembly confirmed an unusually stern Francis, strengthening hypothesis of variations between them. Neither of them quashed these ideas.
In June 2016, Macri made a donation of 16,666,000 pesos (about $15,200 at present alternate charges) to the Scholas Occurentes instructional basis backed by Francis.
Nonetheless, Francis wrote to the Argentinian department of Scholas Occurentes, asking it to return the donation.
If tensions between Francis and Macri had been extra refined, present far-right President Javier Milei has been open in his disdain for the pope.
Whereas Milei was campaigning for the presidency in 2023, he described the pope as “the illustration of evil on Earth”. Nonetheless, Milei’s tone in direction of the pontiff softened after he got here to workplace in December 2023. In February 2024, the 2 met on the Vatican. Milei has mentioned he’ll attend the pope’s funeral.
Milei wrote on X on Monday: “Regardless of variations that appear minor at present, having been in a position to know him in his goodness and knowledge was a real honour for me.”
Jair Bolsonaro
Throughout his papacy, Francis advocated for the safety of the Amazon rainforest, most of which is in Brazil.
Deforestation and wildfires have ravaged the rainforest lately, and as Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2023, Jair Bolsonaro carried out insurance policies seen by critics as exacerbating the wrestle to reserve it.
In 2019, the pope urged Amazonian bishops to take daring motion to handle the rainforest. “If all the things continues because it was, if we spend our days content material that ‘that is the way in which issues have at all times been completed,’ then the reward vanishes, smothered by the ashes of worry and concern for defending the established order,” he mentioned.
In 2020, the pope revealed a textual content on the exploitation of Indigenous folks within the Amazon and the harm brought on to the forest resulting from mining and deforestation.
“Pope Francis mentioned yesterday the Amazon is his, the world’s, everybody’s,” Bolsonaro mentioned in response to the textual content.
“Nicely, the pope could also be Argentinian, however God is Brazilian.”
Present Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva mentioned he’ll attend the pope’s funeral with first woman Janja Lula da Silva.
“Along with his simplicity, his braveness and empathy, Francis introduced the subject of local weather change to the Vatican,” Lula mentioned after the pope’s dying.
Benjamin Netanyahu
The pope repeatedly denounced Israel’s war on Gaza, the place greater than 51,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed since October 7, 2023.
However his sharpest criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the warfare got here in November when the Italian each day La Stampa revealed excerpts from a brand new e-book of his.
“We should always examine fastidiously to evaluate whether or not this matches into the technical definition [of genocide] formulated by worldwide jurists and organisations,” the pope mentioned.
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli described the pope’s remark as a “trivialisation of the time period ‘genocide’ – a trivialisation that comes dangerously near Holocaust denial”.
In December, the pope additionally referred to as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza merciless.
An Israeli Ministry of International Affairs spokesperson responded to the pope’s sentiments, saying it was “notably disappointing as they’re disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s struggle towards jihadist terrorism – a multifront warfare that was compelled upon it beginning on October 7.
“Sufficient with the double requirements and the singling out of the Jewish state and its folks.”
Netanyahu had hosted the pope in 2014, and in line with the Israeli authorities’s web site, Francis in November 2023 met with representatives of Israeli captives taken by Hamas and different Palestinian armed teams to Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog supplied his condolences. “I ship my deepest condolences to the Christian world and particularly the Christian communities in Israel – the Holy Land – on the lack of their nice religious father. … I actually hope that his prayers for peace within the Center East and for the secure return of the hostages will quickly be answered.”
Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin met Francis thrice with their final assembly happening in 2021.
In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Whereas the pope by no means explicitly criticised Putin publicly, he spoke out towards the warfare.
In Could 2022, the pope chastised Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the pinnacle of the Russian Orthodox Church, for supporting the warfare. “Brother, we’re not state clerics. We can’t use the language of politics however that of Jesus,” the pontiff mentioned, describing a dialog with Kirill to the Italian each day Corriere Della Sera. The pope mentioned he had warned Kirill towards turning into “Putin’s altar boy”.
Putin expressed his “deepest condolences” over the pope’s passing in a letter to Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, camerlengo of the Roman Catholic Church. “All through the years of his hold forth, he actively promoted the event of dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Church buildings, in addition to constructive cooperation between Russia and the Holy See,” Putin wrote.
Ukraine’s leaders
Francis additionally upset Ukraine’s leaders after he mentioned throughout a February 2024 interview that Kyiv ought to have “the braveness of the white flag” to barter an finish to the warfare.
“Our flag is a yellow and blue one. That is the flag by which we reside, die, and prevail. We will by no means increase another flags,” Ukraine’s then-foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba wrote in a response on X.
In October after assembly Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the pope mentioned: “I enchantment for the Ukrainians to not be left to freeze to dying. Cease the air strikes towards the civilian inhabitants, at all times probably the most affected. Cease the killing of harmless folks.”
In an X put up on Monday, Zelenskyy wrote in regards to the pope: “He knew methods to give hope, ease struggling by way of prayer, and foster unity. He prayed for peace in Ukraine and for Ukrainians. We grieve along with Catholics and all Christians who regarded to Pope Francis for religious assist.”
Zelenskyy mentioned he’ll attend the pope’s funeral.
Catholic Church
The pope additionally criticised his personal establishment.
In 2022, the pope apologised for the “cultural genocide” of Canada’s Indigenous inhabitants throughout a go to to the nation.
From the 1800s to the late Nineties, the Canadian federal authorities took a minimum of 150,000 kids belonging to First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities to residential faculties to erase their cultures and languages. Most of those faculties had been run by the Catholic Church.
“I’m sorry. I ask forgiveness, specifically, for the methods through which many members of the church and of spiritual communities co-operated, not least by way of their indifference, in tasks of cultural destruction and compelled assimilation promoted by the governments of that point, which culminated within the system of residential faculties,” Francis mentioned.
Nonetheless, his refusal to name what the church did “cultural genocide” drew criticism from some First Nations leaders.
What had been different contentious moments for the pope?
In November 2017, the pope visited Myanmar and didn’t explicitly acknowledge the Rohingya community, for which he drew criticism. A month later, throughout a December go to to Bangladesh, the pope acknowledged the persecuted neighborhood, saying: “The presence of God at present can also be referred to as Rohingya.”
In August 2017, 1000’s of members of the Muslim-majority Rohingya neighborhood had been compelled to flee Myanmar throughout a navy crackdown. As of 2024, almost a million Rohingya are in Bangladesh, in line with United Nations figures. Myanmar doesn’t acknowledge the Rohingya as an ethnic group and denies the group citizenship.
