Pope Francis and Donald Trump Meet at the Vatican

Pope Francis welcomed President Trump to the Vatican on Wednesday, shaking his hand before ushering him into his study for the first face-to-face meeting of the two leaders, who symbolize starkly different views of the world.

Around 8:20 a.m., under a crystalline blue sky, the president’s motorcade rolled into the courtyard of the Apostolic Palace, where ostrich-feather-plumed Swiss Guards saluted as Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, stepped out of an armored limousine.

A few minutes before Mr. Trump’s visit, the pope arrived at the palace in a blue Ford Focus. He stepped out of the car and walked into a side entrance.

For Mr. Trump, who landed in Rome after stops in Saudi Arabia and Israel, the audience in the Vatican caps a tour of the ancestral homes of three of the world’s great monotheistic religions. For Francis, who recently made his own landmark visit to Egypt last month, it was a chance to welcome a second American leader, after President Barack Obama paid his respects in 2014.

The private audience ended at about 9 a.m., with the signaling of a bell, and soon after Mrs. Trump went into the pope’s studio.

The president smiled broadly as he stood next to Francis, who looked more serious but smiled as he shook Mrs. Trump’s hand. The president then introduced his daughter, Ivanka, and the rest of his delegation, beginning with Mr. Kushner.

The pope handed out rosaries to members of the delegation before the group posed for pictures, and then he bade the president and his wife farewell.

On Tuesday night, Cardinal Peter Turkson, a top Vatican official with close ties to Francis, acknowledged the differences in a post on Twitter: “Pope Francis & Pres Trump reach out to Islam-world to exorcise it of rel. Violence. One offers peace of dialogue, the other security of arms,” he wrote, in an apparent reference to the $110 billion weapons sale that Mr. Trump concluded with Saudi Arabia.

The pope and the president were both elected as outsiders promising to carry the far-off voices of the forgotten to the centers of global power. But that is more or less where the similarities end.

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