As tributes pour in from around the world 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 carefully avoided previously.
However, many of those issues — among them the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, climate change and immigration — also put Francis on a collision course with several world leaders. The pope’s funeral is on Saturday in St Peter’s Square, and many world leaders – including those he locked horns with during his papacy – have said they will attend it.
So which world leaders did the pope disagree with and what were the issues that drove those differences?
Donald Trump
Francis battled with the United States president over the issue of migration for nearly a decade.
During his first presidential campaign in 2016, Donald Trump promised to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the US border with Mexico.
In February 2016 during a trip to Mexico, Francis lamented Trump’s pledge: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges is not Christian. ”
Trump hit back in a statement posted on his Facebook account, saying: “No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith.
“I am proud to be a Christian and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened. ”
Trump added a hypothetical scenario involving the ISIL (ISIS) armed group: “If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened,” Trump wrote.
Trump ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 2020 and won in a third run in 2024 on the campaign promise of carrying out “the largest deportation in American history”.
Referring to Trump’s plan for mass deportations, Francis said a day before Trump’s inauguration in January: “If it is true, it will be a disgrace because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill for the imbalance. It won’t do. This is not the way to solve things. ”
In February, the Vatican released a letter to US bishops from the pope about the deportations, which Trump had begun after taking office on January 20. While acknowledging a country’s right to safeguard itself and keep its communities safe, he remarked: “The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness. ”
After the pontiff’s death, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him! ” Trump also said that he would attend the pope’s funeral with first lady 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 more than 45 international trips during his papacy, but Argentina was not among the countries he visited. Before becoming the pope, he was archbishop and then cardinal in Buenos Aires.
In the years that followed, he had tense relations with multiple Argentinian leaders.
Mauricio Macri, who was the centre-right president of Argentina from 2015 to 2019, never publicly clashed with the pope, but Francis was widely believed to be a critic of Macri’s austerity programmes and their impact on the poor in Argentina. When Macri visited the pope at the Vatican in February 2016, the photos of their meeting showed an unusually stern Francis, strengthening speculation of differences between them. Neither of them quashed those suggestions.
In June 2016, Macri made a donation of 16,666,000 pesos (about $15,200 at current exchange rates) to the Scholas Occurentes educational foundation backed by Francis.
However, Francis wrote to the Argentinian branch of Scholas Occurentes, asking it to return the donation.
If tensions between Francis and Macri were more subtle, current far-right President Javier Milei has been open in his disdain for the pope.
While Milei was campaigning for the presidency in 2023, he described the pope as “the representation of evil on Earth”. However, Milei’s tone towards the pontiff softened after he came to office in December 2023. In February 2024, the two met at the Vatican. Milei has said he will attend the pope’s funeral.
Milei wrote on X on Monday: “Despite differences that seem minor today, having been able to know him in his goodness and wisdom was a true honour for me. ”
Jair Bolsonaro
During his papacy, Francis advocated for the protection of the Amazon rainforest, most of which is in Brazil.
Deforestation and wildfires have ravaged the rainforest in recent years, and as Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2023, Jair Bolsonaro implemented policies seen by critics as exacerbating the struggle to save it.
In 2019, the pope urged Amazonian bishops to take bold action to take care of the rainforest. “If everything continues as it was, if we spend our days content that ‘this is the way things have always been done,’ then the gift vanishes, smothered by the ashes of fear and concern for defending the status quo,” he said.
In 2020, the pope published a text on the exploitation of Indigenous people in the Amazon and the damage caused to the forest due to mining and deforestation.
“Pope Francis said yesterday the Amazon is his, the world’s, everyone’s,” Bolsonaro said in response to the text.
“Well, the pope may be Argentinian, but God is Brazilian. ”
Current Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he will attend the pope’s funeral with first lady Janja Lula da Silva.
“With his simplicity, his courage and empathy, Francis brought the topic of climate change to the Vatican,” Lula said after the pope’s death.
Benjamin Netanyahu
The pope repeatedly denounced Israel’s war on Gaza, where more than 51,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed since October 7, 2023.
But his sharpest criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the war came in November when the Italian daily La Stampa published excerpts from a new book of his.
“We should investigate carefully to assess whether this fits into the technical definition [of genocide] formulated by international jurists and organisations,” the pope said.
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli described the pope’s comment as a “trivialisation of the term ‘genocide’ – a trivialisation that comes dangerously close to Holocaust denial”.
In December, the pope also called Israel’s bombardment of Gaza cruel.
An Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson responded to the pope’s sentiments, saying it was “particularly disappointing as they are disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism – a multifront war that was forced upon it starting on October 7.
“Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people. ”
Netanyahu had hosted the pope in 2014, and according to the Israeli government’s website, Francis in November 2023 met with representatives of Israeli captives taken by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups to Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog offered his condolences. “I send my deepest condolences to the Christian world and especially the Christian communities in Israel – the Holy Land – on the loss of their great spiritual father. … I truly hope that his prayers for peace in the Middle East and for the safe return of the hostages will soon be answered. ”
Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin met Francis three times with their last meeting taking place in 2021.
In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While the pope never explicitly criticised Putin publicly, he spoke out against the war.
In May 2022, the pope chastised Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, for supporting the war. “Brother, we are not state clerics. We cannot use the language of politics but that of Jesus,” the pontiff said, describing a conversation with Kirill to the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera. The pope said he had warned Kirill against becoming “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. “Throughout the years of his pontificate, he actively promoted the development of dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, as well as constructive cooperation between Russia and the Holy See,” Putin wrote.
Ukraine’s leaders
Francis also upset Ukraine’s leaders after he said during a February 2024 interview that Kyiv should have “the courage of the white flag” to negotiate an end to the war.
“Our flag is a yellow and blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die, and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags,” Ukraine’s then-foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba wrote in a response on X.
In October after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the pope said: “I appeal for the Ukrainians not to be left to freeze to death. Stop the air strikes against the civilian population, always the most affected. Stop the killing of innocent people. ”
In an X post on Monday, Zelenskyy wrote about the pope: “He knew how to give hope, ease suffering through prayer, and foster unity. He prayed for peace in Ukraine and for Ukrainians. We grieve together with Catholics and all Christians who looked to Pope Francis for spiritual support. ”
Zelenskyy said he will attend the pope’s funeral.
Catholic Church
The pope also criticised his own institution.
In 2022, the pope apologised for the “cultural genocide” of Canada’s Indigenous population during a visit to the country.
From the 1800s to the late 1990s, the Canadian federal government took at least 150,000 children belonging to First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities to residential schools to erase their cultures and languages. Most of these schools were run by the Catholic Church.
“I am sorry. I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities co-operated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools,” Francis said.
However, his refusal to call what the church did “cultural genocide” drew criticism from some First Nations leaders.
What were other contentious moments for the pope?
In November 2017, the pope visited Myanmar and did not explicitly acknowledge the Rohingya community, for which he drew criticism. A month later, during a December visit to Bangladesh, the pope acknowledged the persecuted community, saying: “The presence of God today is also called Rohingya. ”
