The funeral for Pope Francis was intended to be a stripped down affair to honor the simplicity of the man. Instead the attendance of U.S. President Donald Trump has turned it into a high-profile stage for international diplomacy at a moment of geopolitical turmoil.

With the world in the throes of a trade war, markets gyrating wildly and a truce between Ukraine and Russia hanging in the balance, everyone from Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Britain’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron is seeking a quick audience with the mercurial American leader on his first trip abroad since the inauguration.

The brief sojourn, with its blend of religious ceremony and political deal-making, recalls the setting for the reopening of Notre Dame cathedral back in December. Trump’s appearance at that too was a reason for many to rush to Paris for some fly-by negotiating. In Rome, Trump joins 50 heads of state who along with paying their respects to Francis are hoping to cross paths with the president in St. Peter’s Basilica or on the sidelines.

Before heading to Rome, Trump indicated he was up for it though he is on the ground briefly, so the window to conduct any business is narrow.

“I’d like to meet them all,” Trump said Thursday. “That would be nice. I’d like to take care of all of them, but we have many of them there, and they all want to meet, and they want to meet about trade, and we are making some great inroads and great deals.”

For Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni it’s an opportunity to firmly establish herself as one of main conduits to Trump.

Meloni visited him just over a week ago in Washington — where he heaped praise on her — and she later hosted Vice President JD Vance, a fellow Catholic and recent convert, who also saw Pope Francis a day before he died.

One mourner at the funeral who might not be seeking out Trump is Joe Biden. A devout Catholic who met with Francis a number of times — including when Meloni made the unprecedented gesture of bringing the pope to the Group of Seven by the Adriatic Sea — the former president is often blamed by Trump for everything from wars to economic woes.

With so many in Rome, one conspicuous absence is Russia’s Vladimir Putin — who did evade tariff punishment and will host Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and China’s Xi Jinping in Moscow for the Victory Day Parade on May 9.

Leftist Lula will be in Rome — carefully avoiding his libertarian arch foe Javier Milei as he’s been doing now in various gatherings.

One open question is if Trump will use the moment to offer any suggestion on who should next lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

A conclave — a gathering of Cardinals to select the next pope — will meet in the coming weeks and the secretive process is famously hard to predict.