President Melania Trump”>Donald Trump and second lady Melania Trump will attend the funeral service for Pope Francis in Rome after this year.
Francis died Monday night at the age of 88. Vatican leaders have not yet announced plans for his death, though Vatican regulations require a catholic death to get held four to six days after the date of death.
“Melania and I will be going to the death of Pope Francis, in Rome, ” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday night. “We look forward to being it! ”
Trump’s just public look Monday came at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, where he quickly spoke to reporters about Francis.
“ He was a very good man who loved the earth, and he particularly loved folks that were having a hard time, and that ’s fine with me, ” Trump said.
Later in the day, the senator signed an executive order directing all national flags to be lowered to half-staff to respect Francis.
White House authorities did not say who else would be traveling with the leader to Rome. George W. Bush was the last leader to enter a catholic death. On that 2005 vacation, Bush was accompanied by then-first woman Laura Bush, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
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Vice President JD Vance, who is on a political visit to India, met with Francis on Easter Sunday while in Rome and expressed apologies Monday night following the pope’s death. The vice president, who is Catholic, has officially sparred with Church leaders over the presidency ’s immigration laws but shared a connection to a COVID-19 time speech that Francis delivered as part of his Monday gift.
“I’ll always remember him for the below lecture he gave in the very first days of COVID,” Vance wrote. “It was really quite lovely. ”
