Trump meets ardent critic Pope Francis at the Vatican

US President Donald Trump arrived at the Vatican on Wednesday for talks with one of his most high-profile critics, Pope Francis, after the two men exchanged sharp words during the presidential campaign last year.

Before meeting with the Pope, Trump received a tribute from the Swiss Guard in a Vatican courtyard where he was greeted by Archbishop Georg Ganswein, the prefect of the pontifical household.

The US president was accompanied by his daughter Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, a top White House aide, national security adviser H.R McMaster and adviser Hope Hicks.

Trump said, “it is a great honour” on meeting with the Pope.

The two men then posed for photographs and the meeting began at 8:33am.

Trump’s meeting with Pope Francis, his third stop on a nine-day foreign tour due to end on Saturday, is part of his world tour of religions after meeting leaders of Muslim nations in Saudi Arabia and visiting holy sites in Jerusalem.

The pope in 2016 said a man who thinks about building walls and not bridges is “not Christian,” a sharp reprimand for Trump’s vow to build a wall along the US border with Mexico.

Trump said it was “disgraceful” of the Argentine-born pope, who represents just over half of the world’s two billion Christians, to question his faith.

“If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’ ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president,” Trump said during the campaign.

Part of Trump’s motivation for meeting the pope was to dramatise how the three major religions should rally against the threat from Islamist militants.

“We thought that this trip was essential to put together the Muslim faith, the Jewish faith and then the Catholic faith, the Christian faith,” said a senior White House official who briefed reporters on Trump’s Air Force One flight to Rome.

“By putting everybody together you can really build a coalition and show that it’s not a Muslim problem, it’s not a Jewish problem, it’s not a Catholic problem, it’s not a Christian problem, it really is a world problem.”