Pope Francis received a visit last week from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, making her the first — and so far only — civil official to visit the pontiff publicly since he was hospitalized Feb. 14.
“I was very glad to find him alert and responsive,” Meloni said after the Feb. 19 meeting. “We joked around as always. He hasn’t lost his proverbial sense of humor.”
The visit points to a relationship that has surprised many Italians over the past few years: Despite their apparent and difference on policy and outlook, Meloni and the Pope have maintained a good relationship, focusing on shared priorities such as family and life issues, and have appeared to genuinely enjoy each other’s company when they’re together.
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Meloni’s party Fratelli d’Italia, won the 2022 parliamentary elections on a platform that included stricter immigration policies and expanded pro-family policies, such as tax deductions for parents. After election, she formed a coalition with far-right party Lega Nord and center-right party Forza Italia.
The pope received her in audience for the first time in January 2023, four months after she took office as primer minister.
According to the Vatican, their conversation focused on family, the demographic situation in Italy, the conflict in Ukraine, migration, and poverty.
Meloni's political background has drawn scrutiny because she joined the neo-fascist Italian Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI, at the age of 15 in 1992.
Following the dissolution of the MSI in 1995, Meloni joined its successor, the Alleanza Nazionale. That party transitioned into a more mainstream right-wing party and participated in various coalition governments led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Meloni herself held the position of Minister of Youth in Berlusconi's government in 2008.
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When she became prime minister, most Italian commentators expected that Meloni’s relationship with the pope would be cordial yet distant.
Though they share some common concerns, their differences on migration policy seemed likely to create tensions.
But that has not been the case. Pope Francis leaves Italian political matters to the Italian bishops' conference, allowing him to avoid direct confrontation with Meloni on issues where they disagree, particularly migration.
That has the left the pope and the prime minister mostly engaging on points of common cause.
In May 2023, the pope took part in a conference organized by the Italian government on the demographic crisis, speaking alongside Meloni.
“Not only is this unfair, but it is also humiliating,” the pope said about the difficulties of starting a family in Italy.
“Feeling lonely and forced to rely only on one’s own means is dangerous. It means slowly eroding the collective life of a community and resigning to a solitary life.”
Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe at 1.3 children per woman, below the European average of 1.5. Between 2008 and 2022, births in Italy fell by 68%, and the population has decreased by 1.5 million in the past decade.
Meloni has prioritized enacting pro-family policies to ease the financial burden of having children—a major concern for Pope Francis as well.
Her 2022 campaign manifesto promised payments of up to €300 per month for children during their first year and subsequent monthly payments of €260 until a child turns 18, although those policies have yet to be implemented.
Meloni is also a major opponent of surrogacy, which was among the “grave violations on human dignity” outlined by the 2024 Vatican document Dignitas infinita.
“Motherhood is not for sale, wombs are not for rent, children cannot be considered products to be chosen from a supermarket shelf and returned if they do not meet our expectations,” Meloni said in the 2023 conference.
Both Meloni and the pope argue that the demographic crisis is not solely an economic issue but a cultural one. Pope Francis has criticized “a culture that is unfriendly, if not an enemy, of the family,” while Meloni has called for reversing the “dominant culture” to re-establish motherhood as a “socially significant value.”
In April 2024, Meloni announced that Pope Francis would be the first pope to participate in a G7 meeting. She extended an invitation to the Pope to join the annual G7 meeting to be held in Rome in June 2024.
At the meeting, the pope spoke about the importance of keeping human dignity at the center of AI development.
"Faced with the marvels of machines, which seem to know how to choose independently, we should be very clear that decision-making, even when we are confronted with its sometimes dramatic and urgent aspects, must always be left to the human person," he said.
"We would condemn humanity to a future without hope if we took away people's ability to make decisions about themselves and their lives, by dooming them to depend on the choices of machines."
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While she has found common cause with the Bishop of Rome, Meloni has at times clashed with the other Italian bishops, mostly over her stance on migration.
In May 2023, the Italian government approved a decree that limited special protection residence permits, which were granted to migrants who could not benefit from asylum or other kinds of humanitarian protection.
The government also announced plans to build more migrant detention centers and an increase in the maximum detention period for irregular migrants from 120 to 135 days.
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the Italian bishops’ conference, said regarding the decree that “closing the door to those who are knocking, at the end, has the same logic of not leaving room for life in our homes.”
In October 2024, Italy began transporting groups of migrants to reception centers in Albania for asylum processing.
That move drew criticism from Bishop Francesco Savino, vice president of the Italian bishops’ conference, who said, “Migrants are brothers and sisters with their dignity, not packages to be shoved from one place to another.”
Despite those sporadic criticisms, the Italian bishops have refrained from taking a harder stance against Meloni, which has come a surprise to some European Church-watchers.
The reluctance might be due to several factors. First, Meloni’s migration policies are popular. A 2022 post-election poll indicated that 63% of Italians supported Meloni’s migration stance.
Also, her migration policies have been praised by EU officials, among them European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, which makes it harder to paint her stances as extreme.
And, despite the fact that the Holy Father largely defers local politics to Italian bishops, her apparent friendship with the pope might also lead some bishops to be more cautious when criticizing Meloni.
