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Conflicting SIGNALS DCMAGAGYour browser does not support the element.are reaching the new American administration from Rome. And some carry a whiff of incense. While Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was preparing to fly to Washington to schmooze President Donald Trump and his chums, a leader on the other side of the Tiber was communicating stark disapproval of their plans.In a television interview on January 19th Pope Francis described the president’s much-vaunted scheme for mass deportations of unauthorised immigrants as a . Though widely translated as a “disgrace”, the term in Italian is arguably even stronger. It can signify a “tragedy” or “calamity”. Francis added, with visible indignation: “This won’t do! You don’t resolve things this way.”Immigration is a touchy subject for the pontiff: his grandparents emigrated to Argentina. In his he describes how the ship they were to have boarded with their son, the future pope’s father, sank in the Atlantic with the loss of almost 300 lives. Mr Trump’s plans are largely directed at the pope’s fellow Latin Americans.This was not the first time the pope had shown his readiness to clash with the new administration. On January 6th he named Cardinal Robert McElroy, the bishop of San Diego, as archbishop of Washington, . In so doing, he planted on Mr Trump’s doorstep a prelate best known as a spirited defender of America’s immigrants. Anticipating the president’s future plans, then-Bishop McElroy had declared during Mr Trump’s first term: “We must disrupt those who would seek to send troops into our streets to deport the undocumented, to rip mothers and fathers from their families.”The appointment of the feisty cardinal was seen in Rome as being a form of retaliation for Mr Trump’s proposal of a hardline supporter for the job of American ambassador to the Holy See. Brian Burch, who heads a political activist group, Catholic Vote, has publicly rebuked Francis and accused him of spreading confusion among the members of his church.Neither Mr Trump nor Pope Francis would seem to be in a mood to co-operate. Yet both have a common interest in ending the war in Ukraine. And Pope Francis’s stance has been more in tune with Mr Trump than with most European leaders. Last year he infuriated the Ukrainian government when he appeared to say it should have “the courage of the white flag” and start peace negotiations.Peacemaking has also been on Ms Meloni’s mind. The only European leader to attend Mr Trump’s inauguration, she had already been described by the president—at an earlier meeting in his Mar-a-Lago residence—as a “fantastic woman”. Enveloped in the aura that American presidential approval confers, Ms Meloni seems determined to give Italy a wider and weightier role in international affairs. While she was in Washington her foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, was flying out of Rome for talks with his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, and the Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Mustafa.Ms Meloni herself will travel to the Middle East on January 26th for a visit to Saudi Arabia. Her talks there will no doubt touch on Saudi Arabia’s conditions for joining Italy, Japan and Britain in a project for the construction of a next-generation combat aircraft. But it would be surprising if Ms Meloni did not also discuss with her hosts a more lasting solution to the conflict between Israel and Hamas. In Jerusalem, Mr Tajani announced that Italy was ready to send troops to Gaza as part of an Arab-led international peace mission.This is heady stuff for Italy. Though it is a member of the elite 7 group of rich Western countries, it has long wielded much less diplomatic clout than its economic importance would justify. It remains to be seen whether Italians will react with more pride than concern to an expanded international role. But with Germany and France both hamstrung by their domestic politics, an opening for European leadership exists. And Ms Meloni seems determined to grasp it.
