President Trump arrives in Rome ahead of meeting with Pope Francis

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images(ROME) — President Trump has arrived in Rome, Italy, ahead of his first audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican Wednesday.

The visit to the Vatican marks the third stop of Trump’s tour visiting sites representing three major world religions. Over the weekend, the president stopped in Saudi Arabia where he delivered an address to Muslim leaders, and Monday through Tuesday he visited Israel and the West Bank where he met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

The president and Pope Francis will certainly have differences to iron out during their meeting. In February 2016 when Trump was a candidate, the pontiff remarked on the Republican’s key campaign proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, saying it was un-Christian.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” the pope said.

Trump responded at the time with a statement calling Francis’ remarks “disgraceful,” and suggesting that Mexico was using the religious leader as a “pawn.”

“No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith,” Trump said. “They are using the pope as a pawn and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing so, especially when so many lives are involved and when illegal immigration is so rampant.”

The president and the pope have also staked out different approaches to climate change, and their upcoming meeting comes as Trump weighs whether to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which he had previously promised to cancel within his first 100 days in office.

When the pope was asked recently what he expects from his meeting with Trump, given their differing views, he replied that he doesn’t want to prejudge the president before he has met him.

“I will tell him what I think, he will tell me what he thinks, but I never wanted to judge someone before I listen to the person first,” the pope said.

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