Why, on God’s green earth, would Donald Trump deign to attend Pope Francis’s funeral? To show respect? To mingle with other world leaders? To get his mug on television?
Pope Francis was arguably Trump’s highest-profile critic, especially when it came to the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants.
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In the aftermath of the pope’s death, Trump was uncharacteristically gracious, posting on social media that Pope Francis was “a very good man.”
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Trump called that very good man “disgraceful” in 2016 after the pope dismissed Trump’s proposal to build a wall between the US and Mexico. The pope said that anyone who only thinks about building walls instead of bridges “is not Christian.”
Trump, whose base includes millions of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics, hit back, saying, “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”
For all the kind words he showered on the pope in the immediate aftermath of the pope’s death, it’s hard to imagine Trump disagreed with the less than charitable assessment offered by Roger Stone, the Trump adviser who avoided 40 months in prison after Trump commuted his sentence for lying to Congress to protect Trump.
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Stone, displaying the compassion of a viper, said this of the pope: “His papacy was never legitimate and his teachings regularly violated both the Bible and church dogma. I rather think it’s warm where he is right now.”
So gracious.
But, give Stone this much: at least he was honest.
Trump’s platitudes ring hollow indeed. But the death of Pope Francis offers Trump and MAGA Catholics the prospect, however unlikely, of replacing a progressive voice in the Vatican with someone more ideologically in tune with the more conservative voices within the church in the US.
At the very least, Trump has to be hoping the next pope isn’t as withering a critic as Francis was.
Nearly 60 percent of US Catholics voted for Trump last November, according to exit polls. Another survey put the figure at 54 percent.
Either way, Trump, who describes himself as a non-denominational Christian, won the Catholic vote, decisively. The pope’s criticism of Trump when it came to the environment, the poor, and especially immigration doesn’t appear to have dissuaded the majority of American Catholics from voting for Trump.
Catholics comprise more than one-third of Trump’s cabinet.
The nine-member US Supreme Court that has been deferential to Trump’s unprecedented claims and exercise of executive power is comprised of six Catholics, only one of whom, Sonia Sotomayor, is liberal and regularly rules against Trump. (You could argue there are six conservative “Catholic” justices, given that Justice Neil Gorsuch, now an Episcopalian, was raised and educated as a Catholic, and voted with the five other conservative Catholic justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.)
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Thomas Groome, a professor of theology at Boston College, acknowledges that conservative Catholics in the US have been a boon to Trump, and suspects Trump’s show of respect to Pope Francis and the institution is keeping with his transactional approach to pretty much everything: that the conclave of cardinals who will elect a new pope will reward Trump with someone who thinks more like him.
Highly unlikely, says Groome.
“Francis appointed about two-thirds of the cardinals who will select his successor,” Groome said. “Trump may be hoping he’ll get a reactionary, a right-wing pope. But I don’t think that will happen.”
Groome said he was more concerned about Trump’s reaction when the president realizes that, following Vatican protocol, he won’t get the best seat in the house at St. Peter’s Basilica.
“My understanding is he’s been assigned to sit in the third row,” Groome said. “He’s not going to like that.”
Still, gripped by Christian charity, and influenced by an enduring belief in redemption, Groome holds onto the remote, infinitesimal chance Donald Trump could, on the way to Rome, have a Road to Damascus conversion, that some of Pope Francis’s empathy could somehow rub off on him.
“St. Paul fell off his horse,” Groome said. “Maybe Donald Trump will, too.”
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.
