The tributes from around the world are poured out for Pope Francis, who passed away Monday at the age of 88, are remembered by many for embracing the communities and challenges that the Roman Catholic Church had previously carefully avoided.
But many of these issues have brought Francis to a clash course with several world leaders, including the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, climate change and immigration. The Pope’s funeral will take place on Saturday at St. Peter’s Square, and many world leaders — including those who locked up the horns between the popes — say they will be present at it.
So, which world leaders disagreed with the Pope, and what was the question that encouraged those differences?
Donald Trump
Francis fought the US president over immigration issues for nearly a decade.
During his first presidential election in 2016, Donald Trump promised to build a “big and beautiful wall” along the US border with Mexico.
In February 2016, during a trip to Mexico, Francis lamented Trump’s pledge.
Returning to a statement posted on his Facebook account, Trump said:
“I am proud to be a Christian and as president, I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened.”
Trump has added a hypothetical scenario involving an armed group of ISIL (ISIS). “If the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, I promise that the Pope prayed and prayed that Donald Trump was president, as everyone knows that it is the ultimate trophy of ISIS,” Trump wrote.
Trump failed to be re-election in 2020 and won his third run on the promise of a campaign to carry out the “largest deportation in American history” in 2024.
Francis said a day before Trump’s inauguration in January, referring to Trump’s plans for a massive deportation:
In February, the Vatican issued a letter from the Pope to the American bishop about the deportation that Trump began after taking office on January 20th. It places men and women, and the whole family, and them in certain vulnerabilities and vulnerable states. ”
After the clergyman’s death, Trump posted on his true social platform. Trump also said he would attend the Pope’s funeral with First Lady Melania Trump.
Mauricio Macri and Javier Milei
Francis left his hometown of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, in 2013 after he was elected Pope. The Pope made more than 45 international trips during his Pope, but Argentina was not in the country he visited. Before becoming Pope, he was an archbishop and later a cardinal in Buenos Aires.
Over the next few years he had tense relationships with multiple Argentine leaders.
Mauricio Macri, the Argentina centre head from 2015 to 2019, did not have public conflict with the Pope, but Francis was widely believed to be a critic of Macri’s austerity program and its impact on the poor in Argentina. When Macri visited the Pope at the Vatican in February 2016, photos from their meeting showed unusually harsh Francis, reinforcing speculation of differences between them. Neither of them canceled out these proposals.
In June 2016, MacRI donated 16,666,000 pesos (approximately $15,200 at the current exchange rate) to the Francis-backed Scholas Passentes Education Foundation.
However, Francis wrote to the Argentine branch of Scholas Schorus Schestentes and asked him to return the donation.
If the tension between Francis and Macri was more subtle, the current far-right president, Javier Miley, is open to the Pope.
Mylay had campaigned for the presidency in 2023, and he described the Pope as “an expression of evil on earth.” However, after taking office in December 2023, Miley’s tone to the Bishop has softened. In February 2024, the two met at the Vatican. Mairay said he would attend the Pope’s funeral.
Milei wrote to X on Monday:
Jair Bolsonaro
During his Pope, Francis advocated for the protection of the Amazon rainforest. Most of them are in Brazil.
Deforestation and wildfires have been destructing rainforests in recent years, and as Brazilian president from 2019 to 2023, Jair Bolsonaro implemented policies that critics saw as exacerbating the struggle to save it.
In 2019, the Pope urged Amazon bishops to take bold action to take care of the rainforest. “When everything continues, as you spend your content saying, ‘This is how it’s always been done,’ the gifts disappear and you’ll suffocate yourself to the ashes of fear and concern to protect the status quo,” he said.
In 2020, the Pope published a textbook on the exploitation of indigenous peoples in the Amazon and the damage caused to forests from mining and deforestation.
“Pope Francis said yesterday that Amazon was him, the guy of the world,” Bolsonaro said in response to the text.
“Well, the Pope may be Argentinian, but God is Brazilian.”
Current Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva said he will be attending the Pope’s funeral with First Lady Janja Lula da Silva.
“His simplicity, courage and empathy brought climate change to the Vatican,” Lula said after the Pope’s death.
Benjamin Netanyahu
The Pope repeatedly condemned Israeli war with Gaza, where more than 51,000 Palestinians have been confirmed to have been killed since October 7, 2023.
However, his most keen criticism and war of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came in November when Italian Daily La Stanca published an excerpt from his new book.
“We need to carefully investigate this to assess whether this fits the technical definition (of genocide) developed by international legal scholars and organizations,” the Pope said.
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikuri, described the Pope’s comments as “the trivial thing of the term “genocide,” that is, the trivial thing that is at risk for the denial of the Holocaust.”
In December, the Pope was also known as the cruel artillery bombardment in Gaza, Israel.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman responded to the pope’s sentiment, saying that it was particularly unfortunate as it was separated from the true facts and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism.
“A double standard and singles from the Jewish state and its people are enough.”
Netanyahu hosted the Pope in 2014, and in November 2023 Francis met with representatives of Israeli prisoners of war that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups had taken to Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed his sadness. “I represent the deepest pathos of the despair of the great spiritual Father of the Christian community of Christendom, particularly the Israeli Christian community – the holy land. …I truly hope that his prayers will be answered soon for peace in the Middle East and for the safe return of hostages.”
Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin met Francis three times and his final meeting was held in 2021.
In February 2022, Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Pope never publicly criticized Putin, but he opposed the war.
In May 2022, the Pope disciplined Moscow Patriarch Cyrill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, to support the war. “Brothers, we are not clergy of the state. We cannot use the language of politics, but we cannot use the language of Jesus,” the Pope said. The Pope said he warned Kirill to become “the boy at Putin’s Altar.”
President Putin “expressed the deepest sadness of his dolph” over the death of the Pope in writing to Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, Camerlengo of the Roman Catholic Church. “Through his pope’s years, he actively promoted the development of dialogue between Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church, and promoted constructive cooperation between Russia and the Holy See,” Putin wrote.
Ukrainian leaders
Francis also confused the Ukrainian leaders after Kiev said in a February 2024 interview that he should have “white flag courage” to negotiate the end of the war.
“Our flags are yellow and blue. This is the flag we live in, die and win. We don’t raise any other flags,” wrote Dmytro Kuleba, the then foreign language minister in Ukraine, in his response to X.
After meeting Ukraine’s President Voldymi Zelenki in October, the Pope said: “I appeal to Ukrainians not to be forced to freeze. Stop airstrikes on civilians. They will always be most affected. Stop killing innocent people.”
In X’s post Monday, Zelensky wrote about the Pope: “He knew how to give hope, relieve suffering and promote unity through prayer. He prayed for peace for Ukrainians and Ukrainians.
Zelensky said he would attend the Pope’s funeral.
Catholic Church
The Pope also criticized his own institutions.
In 2022, the Pope apologized for the “cultural genocide” of Canadian indigenous peoples during a visit to the country.
From the 1800s and the late 1990s, the Canadian federal government took at least 150,000 children from the first countries, the Méti and Inuit communities to residential schools to erase their culture and language. Most of these schools were run by the Catholic Church.
“I’m sorry. Please forgive me for the way many members of the church and religious communities worked together in a way that culminated in the system of residential schools, particularly through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the government of the time,” Francis said.
However, the refusal to call the church “cultural genocide” drew criticism from several Indigenous leaders.
What were other controversial moments for the Pope?
In November 2017, the Pope visited Myanmar and explicitly refused to acknowledge the Rohingya community. A month later, during a visit to Bangladesh in December, the Pope acknowledged the persecuted community and said, “The existence of God today is also known as the Rohingya.”
In August 2017, thousands of members of the majority of Muslim Rohingya communities were forced to flee Myanmar during military crackdowns. According to UN figures, as of 2024, there were nearly 1 million Rohingyas in Bangladesh. Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as an ethnic group and denies group citizenship.