The president of Argentina, Javier Mileiwill hold a first meeting tomorrow with the dad Franciscowhom he openly criticized in the election campaign, and while that moment arrives he has begun to visit Romepassing through the famous Coliseum.
The Argentine president, on his second trip abroad after his time in Davos Forumarrived in Rome from Israel early on Friday afternoon without specifying in his official agenda what he would do the first two days in the Eternal City.
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However, at night he visited the capital’s quintessential monument, the Flavian Amphitheater or Colosseum, empty of tourists and with his sister Karina Milei, general secretary of the Presidency, with whom he was immortalized in a photo on his social networks.
This Saturday with the agenda “free“He took advantage of it to visit the”Moses”, the imposing sculpture of Michelangelo in the church of San Pietro In Vincoli.
On the other hand, as they recognize sources diplomaticon his first Roman night there was a last minute change with his accommodation.
Milei and his sister had to stay in the building of the embassy Argentinaa palace in front of the imposing basilica of Santa María La Mayor in which he slept Evita Peron in 1947, but since they did not like their stays, they finally decided to stay in a hotel on the prestigious Via Veneto.
The first official act of his trip will be the canonization tomorrow of the first Argentine saint, the laywoman María Antonia de San José Paz y Figueroaknown as “Mama Antula”at a mass in the basilica of San Pedro del Vatican at 9:30 local time (08:30 GMT).
It will be then when Milei and the Argentine pope, whom during the campaign he called “representative of the evil one on Earth”, they will maintain a first contact, with a greeting before the ceremony.
The president will be accompanied by his sister, his Foreign Minister, Diana Mondino; the head of the Interior, Guillermo Francos; that of Human capital, Sandra Pettovello; the Secretary of Worship, Francisco Sanchezand the ambassador to Israel, Rabbi Axel Wahnish.
However, the moment that generates the greatest expectation will take place on Monday, when Francisco He will receive Milei in a private audience at the Apostolic Palace, a face-to-face meeting about whose atmosphere the gestures and minutes of the meeting between the two will also speak.
The pontiff Bergoglio has downplayed the ultraliberal’s accusations, admitting that “These are things that are said in an electoral campaign”and in fact it was he who picked up the phone to congratulate him after his presidential election.
On the table will be an eventual and long-awaited trip by Francisco to his native country, the first since his election in 2013, as well as many other social issues such as social justice or the defense of life, when his party has presented a bill to repeal the abortion law.
The president, as required by protocol, will also meet with the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
While the president attends the canonization of “Mama Antula“, the protest of Argentine and Italian citizens is expected in the nearby Piazza Risorgimento, a demonstration called by social networks with the slogan “Javier Milei, Rome and Europe reject you.”
Then he will leave the Vatican, a tiny independent state in the heart of Rome, to carry out an official visit to Italy, a country with which Argentina maintains historical cultural, social and economic ties (it is the foreign country in which the most Italians reside). .
The president will meet on Monday at 1:30 p.m. local time (12:30 GMT) with the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, at the Quirinale Palace in Rome.
And then he will meet with the prime minister, the far-right Giorgia Meloni, who has praised him on several occasions.
In any case, Milei, despite being on the other side of the Ocean, does not detach himself from Argentine politics and has attacked his opponents who did not support his ‘Omnibus Law’, warning that the rules have changed.
“We did not come here to continue playing the same impoverishing game of the usual politicians,” nor “to make spurious pacts against the interests of Argentines,” he said in a long publication on his X account, in which he maintains very active.
