A reported 400,000 mourners filed into St Peter’s Square for Pope Francis’s funeral on Saturday night (local Australian time), while millions more of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics watched the service on television and online. Yet the headlines were dominated not by the farewell to the late pontiff but by the impromptu encounter between the US and Ukrainian presidents – pictured sitting face-to-face in the basilica before the Mass began. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later described the meeting as having “the potential to become historic,” a remarkable turnabout after his last engagement in February with Donald Trump in the Oval Office which ended in disarray.
Good meeting. We discussed a lot one on one. Hoping for results on everything we covered. Protecting lives of our people. Full and unconditional ceasefire. Reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out. Very symbolic meeting that has potential to… pic.twitter.com/q4ZhVXCjw0
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) April 26, 2025
Trump and Zelensky were just two among an extensive roster of world leaders in Rome, including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Closer to home, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon made the trip after marking ANZAC Day at Gallipoli and visiting London.
As I have noted previously in The Interpreter, these “working funerals” – from that of Pope Francis to Japan’s former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi – are proving to be fertile ground for spontaneous diplomacy.
So why at the weekend was Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, nowhere to be seen?
With parliament dissolved, caretaker conventions give incumbents reason to avoid overseas travel during election campaigns. Yet predecessors have applied those rules very differently. In 2013, Kevin Rudd surprised observers by skipping the G20 in St Petersburg days before the election; in 2001, John Howard defied criticism to attend APEC in China, bolstering his leadership credentials after the Tampa affair and 9/11. Undoubtedly, those precedents would have weighed on Albanese’s decision.
By opting out of the Vatican’s sliding-door diplomacy, Albanese forfeited a prime opportunity to project confidence among voters and key allies.
Albanese is fighting for Labor’s first back-to-back victory since 2010, but in today’s turbulent world he missed an easy opportunity to bolster voter confidence in his foreign-policy steadiness. The forthcoming 2025 Lowy Institute Poll shows him 12 points ahead of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton on overall competence, yet narrowly behind on handling Washington and Trump. A new ABC survey, however, elevates Albanese to a 10-point lead on the same question about managing US relations, with over two-thirds of respondents expressing concern about Trump’s potential impact on Australia.
Granted, the odds of Albanese securing a fleeting tête-à-tête with Trump in Rome were slim – but you can’t get runs on the board if you’re sitting in the pavilion.
Had he attended, Albanese might also have sat alongside Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, strengthening ties in business, innovation and climate cooperation following Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s visit to Vienna earlier this year. He could have met Ukraine’s president once more, capitalising on the Australian public’s overwhelming support (69%) for Zelenskyy over Trump in their recent White House clash. And he would have had the chance to engage with Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr – leader of Australia’s fifth-largest migrant community, whose Filipino-Australian members constitute a significant share of our Catholic population (nearly 20% of the total).
Instead, Albanese proved risk-averse and dispatched a modest bipartisan delegation: Governor-General Sam Mostyn, Ambassador-designate to the Holy See Keith Pitt, Trade Minister Don Farrell and former deputy prime minister Michael McCormack. While the world’s attention was fixed on Rome’s symbolic power, Australia was conspicuously absent.
As the Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher observes, both major parties are keen to distract voters from the international issues at the heart of this election. By opting out of the Vatican’s sliding-door diplomacy, Albanese forfeited a prime opportunity to project confidence among voters and key allies – and that missed moment may resonate long after the polls close.
