President Michael D. Higgins is set to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican this morning for a private audience — as part of his five-day visit to Rome.

They are expected to discuss a wide array of topics including climate change, migration, global poverty, food security, the rights of indigenous people, conflicts and global peace.

It marks the fourth engagement between the pair — with previous meetings in 2017 and 2021 which occurred at the Vatican, and one other meeting which was held at Áras an Uachtaráin in 2018.

President Higgins will also present Pope Francis with a sculpture which the President chose in recognition of the Pope’s work in bringing public attention to the humanitarian issues facing refugees and migrants globally.

Created by renowned Dublin-based sculptor John Behan RHA, the piece is entitled 'The Expelled.' A key theme in Behan’s work has been displacement of people and emigration, with a recent focus on depictions of the experiences of refugees.

President Higgins has previously praised the contribution Pope Francis has made to the debate regarding climate change, particularly within his recent encyclical Laudate Deum.

Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2016. Credit: Long Thiên

Laudate Deum (Praise God) is described as Pope Francis’ “exhortation to all people of good will on the climate crisis."

At a reception for the Irish community in the Irish Embassy in Rome on Tuesday, Higgins expressed his hopes that the warning of Laudate Deum is “not lost on global leaders."

President Higgins stated: “It would be very foolish if people thought that, with the different changes that are taking place in the world, that efforts at transcendence and periods of reflection and recognising the different approaches towards establishing dignity were not important.”

Following their engagement, President Higgins will hold a bilateral meeting with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin and travel to the burial site of Campo Santo in the Teutonic Pontifical College, where he will lay a wreath in honour of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty; whose work during the Nazi occupation of Rome in World War II saved the lives of thousands of Jewish people.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of O'Flaherty's death.

Later this evening, President Higgins attend the exhibition ‘Ireland and the Birth of Europe’ at the Irish Pontifical College, which is a Catholic seminary for the training and education of priests. The exhibition details the significant role played by Irish scholars in the forming of a shared sense of European identity.

President Higgins kicked off his visit to Rome with an address to the opening session of the World Food Forum, in which he condemned the “dysfunctionality of our current food systems."

“The issues of ownership of seeds, fertilisers, tools of production
and their distribution, obstacles to the migration of science and technological
innovations, questions around the lending policies of the financial institutions cannot continue to be ignored,” Higgins said in his opening address.

He also stressed the threat faced by the planet’s depleting water resources, saying that the world is at "a perilous tipping point."

Tomorrow, President Higgins will provide the keynote address at the closing session of the Forum. Higgins’ visit to Rome also included a meeting with the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, on Tuesday.