Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump post­ed an ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence-gen­er­at­ed im­age of him­self dressed as the pope as the mourn­ing of Pope Fran­cis con­tin­ues and just days be­fore the con­clave to elect his suc­ces­sor is set to be­gin. Trump’s ac­tion drew re­bukes from a group rep­re­sent­ing Catholic bish­ops in New York and among Ital­ians.

The im­age, shared Fri­day night on Trump’s Truth So­cial site and lat­er re­post­ed by the White House on its of­fi­cial X ac­count, raised eye­brows on so­cial me­dia and at the Vat­i­can, which is still in the pe­ri­od of nine days of of­fi­cial mourn­ing fol­low­ing Fran­cis’ death on April 21. Catholic car­di­nals have been cel­e­brat­ing dai­ly Mass­es in his mem­o­ry and are due to open the con­clave to elect his suc­ces­sor on Wednes­day.

The death of a pope and elec­tion of an­oth­er is a mat­ter of ut­most solem­ni­ty for Catholics, for whom the pope is Christ’s vic­ar on Earth. That is all the more true in Italy, where the pa­pa­cy is held in high es­teem even by non­re­li­gious Ital­ians.

The im­age fea­tur­ing Trump in a white cas­sock and point­ed miter, or bish­op’s hat, was the top­ic of sev­er­al ques­tions dur­ing the Vat­i­can’s dai­ly con­clave brief­ing Sat­ur­day. Ital­ian and Span­ish news re­ports lament­ed its poor taste and said it was of­fen­sive, giv­en that the pe­ri­od of of­fi­cial mourn­ing is still un­der­way.

Left-lean­ing for­mer Pre­mier Mat­teo Ren­zi said the im­age was shame­ful. “This is an im­age that of­fends be­liev­ers, in­sults in­sti­tu­tions and shows that the leader of the right-wing world en­joys clown­ing around,” Ren­zi wrote on X. “Mean­while, the U.S. econ­o­my risks re­ces­sion and the dol­lar los­es val­ue. The sov­er­eignists are do­ing dam­age, every­where.”

The Vat­i­can spokesman, Mat­teo Bruni, de­clined to com­ment.

In the Unit­ed States, the New York State Catholic Con­fer­ence, which rep­re­sents the bish­ops of the state in work­ing with gov­ern­ment, ac­cused Trump of mock­ery.

“There is noth­ing clever or fun­ny about this im­age, Mr. Pres­i­dent,” they wrote. “We just buried our beloved Pope Fran­cis and the car­di­nals are about to en­ter a solemn con­clave to elect a new suc­ces­sor of St. Pe­ter. Do not mock us.”

Italy’s left-lean­ing La Re­pub­bli­ca al­so fea­tured the im­age on its home­page Sat­ur­day with a com­men­tary ac­cus­ing Trump of “patho­log­i­cal mega­lo­ma­nia.”

Asked to re­spond to the crit­i­cism, White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt said that, “Pres­i­dent Trump flew to Italy to pay his re­spects for Pope Fran­cis and at­tend his fu­ner­al, and he has been a staunch cham­pi­on for Catholics and re­li­gious lib­er­ty.”

Jack Poso­biec, a promi­nent far-right in­flu­encer and Trump al­ly who re­cent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Catholic prayer event in March at Trump’s Flori­da re­sort, al­so de­fend­ed the pres­i­dent.

“I’m Catholic. We’ve all been mak­ing jokes about the up­com­ing Pope se­lec­tion all week. It’s called a sense of hu­mor,” he wrote on X.

The episode comes af­ter Trump joked last week about his in­ter­est in the va­can­cy. “I’d like to be pope. That would be my num­ber one choice,” the thrice mar­ried pres­i­dent, who is not Catholic, told re­porters.

Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham, a close Trump al­ly, piled on.

“I was ex­cit­ed to hear that Pres­i­dent Trump is open to the idea of be­ing the next Pope. This would tru­ly be a dark horse can­di­date, but I would ask the pa­pal con­clave and Catholic faith­ful to keep an open mind about this pos­si­bil­i­ty!” Gra­ham, R-S.C., wrote on X. “The first Pope-U.S. Pres­i­dent com­bi­na­tion has many up­sides. Watch­ing for white smoke…. Trump MMXXVI­II!”

Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance, who is Catholic and was one of the last for­eign of­fi­cials to meet with Fran­cis be­fore the pope died, al­so joked about Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio be­com­ing pope, sug­gest­ing Ru­bio could add it to the long list of ti­tles he holds, in­clud­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er and act­ing archivist.

Be­yond float­ing him­self for the job, Trump al­so has put in a plug for Car­di­nal Tim­o­thy Dolan, the arch­bish­op of New York.

“I have no pref­er­ence. I must say, we have a car­di­nal that hap­pens to be out a place called New York who’s very good. So we’ll see what hap­pens,” he said.

Dolan, 75, is one of 10 U.S. car­di­nals who will be vot­ing in the con­clave, but Trump’s pitch might have cost Dolan sup­port.

The rea­son con­claves are held in se­cre­cy, with car­di­nals se­questered for the du­ra­tion, is to pre­vent out­side sec­u­lar pow­ers from in­flu­enc­ing their choice, as oc­curred in cen­turies past.

There is an old say­ing about cam­paign­ing for the job of pope or of be­ing pro­mot­ed ex­ces­sive­ly, es­pe­cial­ly by out­siders: If you “en­ter a con­clave as pope, you leave as a car­di­nal.”

While Trump at­tend­ed Fran­cis’ fu­ner­al, he and Vance have clashed with U.S. bish­ops in gen­er­al and Fran­cis in par­tic­u­lar over the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s hard line stance on im­mi­gra­tion and its ef­forts to de­port mi­grants en masse. Right be­fore he was hos­pi­tal­ized in Feb­ru­ary for pneu­mo­nia, Fran­cis is­sued a strong re­buke of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s mass de­por­ta­tion plans and Vance’s the­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of it.

Over 12 years as pope, Fran­cis tried to re­make the U.S. Catholic hi­er­ar­chy more in his im­age, el­e­vat­ing pas­tors who pri­or­i­tized so­cial jus­tice and mi­gra­tion is­sues over cul­ture war­riors who were more favoured by his more doc­tri­naire pre­de­ces­sors St. John Paul II and Bene­dict XVI. A new pope who is more con­ser­v­a­tive could re­verse that ef­fort.

Trump has nom­i­nat­ed as his am­bas­sador to the Holy See Bri­an Burch, whose Catholicvote.org has been ag­gres­sive­ly cov­er­ing the pre-con­clave days at the Vat­i­can. It was one of the main dis­sem­i­na­tors in Eng­lish-speak­ing me­dia of a re­port, flat­ly and of­fi­cial­ly de­nied by the Vat­i­can, that Car­di­nal Pietro Parolin had had a health scare this past week that re­quired med­ical at­ten­tion.

Parolin was the sec­re­tary of state un­der Fran­cis and is seen as a lead­ing con­tender to be pope. He is al­so the main ar­chi­tect of the Vat­i­can’s Chi­na pol­i­cy and its con­tro­ver­sial 2018 deal with Bei­jing over bish­op nom­i­na­tions -- a deal that the was sharply crit­i­cized by the first Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

___ Win­field re­port­ed from Vat­i­can City.

NEW YORK (AP) —