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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Thousands of Mourners Pay Their Final Respects to Pope Francis; Pope Francis Lies in State at St. Peter's Basilica; Pope Francis Honored by His Hometown Soccer Club; President Trump Will Take Make First Foreign Trip of Second Term to Attend Funeral of Pope Francis; Trump Presses Zelenskyy to Accept U.S.-backed Peace Deal; Conclave to Select Next Pope Expected to Being in Early May; Israel Marks Holocaust Remembrance Day. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired April 23, 2025 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: ...you were talking about that, right, 88235?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

CULVER: What do you think about that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that it has to be with destiny, that's what I think --

CULVER: Not a coincidence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not a coincidence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CULVER: Erin, the Pope's love for sports is rooted in also trying to get young people not to be caught up and shuttered in, you know, isolated in this virtual world. He wanted them to be social and out on the streets, it was the same message he sent his priests here.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Yes, lovely exchange you had with that young man. Thanks so much to you David and thanks so much to all of you. Let's send it off now to Anderson in Rome.

[20:00:37]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": And good evening again from Rome.

We got another reminder today of the remarkable contrast between the grandeur of this place and the humility of the man who for 12 years presided over it. You could see it today. You could see it this morning as white gloved pallbearers surrounded by Swiss Guards with Medici garments and medieval spears carried the plain wooden coffin, which was open, revealing the body of Pope Francis.

They carried him through the streets from his simple residence to the breathtaking splendor of Saint Peter's Basilica. You could see it also inside the chamber, in a structure conceived in the 16th century, containing treasures of the renaissance but not this time the kind of grand biers which have held other papal caskets, putting them almost literally up on a pedestal.

No, just a simple platform befitting a down to earth Pope whose ease with people is now reciprocated by the many thousands, the thousands of people we saw today who've already waited in line snaking through the outside Saint Peters Square.

These are live pictures from inside the Basilica, where the final people for the night have just been making their way through. And though viewing hours are now officially over, there was a demonstration a short time ago of just how much people want to be here to pay their final respects. People rushing to get in line before closing time, mourners who've traveled here from every corner of the world.

There are a lot of developments to bring you over the hour tonight from here in Rome, in Vatican City in Argentina, where Pope Francis grew up. I'll also be joined by Robert Harris, the best-selling author of the book "Conclave," upon which the movie is based.

We begin, though, with what this remarkable, solemn and historic day looked like to CNN's Christopher Lamb.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTOPHER LAMB, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Chants to the Saints echoing through the eternal city as the sunlight streamed into Saint Peter's Basilica. Pope Francis' body, transferred from his humble residence to the grandeur of Saint Peter's in a simple wooden coffin near to the tomb of the first Pope, Saint Peter.

Pilgrims queuing for hours to pay their respects to a Pope they felt they knew, believers and nonbelievers alike.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's the only Pope that I know of, because I was quite young when the last Pope was elected, and so -- but everything I know about him, it was more for the people.

LAMB (on camera): While, thousands of people have gathered here in Saint Peter's Square to line up to see Pope Francis for one last time. Now, I myself did that in the Casa Santa Marta. It was really quite an overwhelming experience. And many people here are saying that Pope Francis was their Pope, and that's why so many are turning out now.

LAMB (voice over): One group of nuns from Sicily, who traveled through the night to pray by Pope Francis.

SISTER CATHERINE CANING, SISTERS OF THE SACRED HEART: He was our Pope. So, why not pay homage to this Saint? If I could call him that now. He was a Saint for us.

LAMB (voice over): These crowds, an expression of the outpouring of grief for a Pope who touched them personally. The last funeral of a serving Pope, John Paul II was 20 years ago. Some two billion people watched and hundreds of thousands attended in person.

As dusk fell on Saint Peter's Square today, the crowds only grew. Brought together by their common sense of loss for Pope Francis, who even in death continues to touch the hearts of so many.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: And CNN Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb joins me now, along with Father Patrick Mary Briscoe, host of the podcast "Godsplaining" and editor of the Catholic magazine "Our Sunday Visitor."

Christopher, first of all, just what was it like out there today and talking to the people? I mean, it's such a sort of communal feeling. There's something really beautiful about it.

LAMB: Yes, an amazing kind of experience out there. The crowds gathering, queuing for hours to see the Pope. You got a sense that people in the square really have this personal connection with Pope Francis. They felt like they knew him and they wanted to pay their respect. There was a lot of emotion. I spoke to the nuns who traveled overnight from Sicily to be here already, saying they feel like he's a saint, but really kind of overwhelmed having seen the Pope in Saint Peter's.

[20:05:23]

COOPER: Father Briscoe, you just arrived here early this morning. What was it like for the first time for you here?

FATHER PATRICK MARY BRISCOE, HOST OF THE PODCAST "GODSPLAINING" AND EDITOR OF THE CATHOLIC MAGAZINE "OUR SUNDAY VISITOR": I was shocked when I got to the Square and I saw all the people gathered. You know, one thing that's kind of interesting about the funeral of a Pope is that it catches Rome in the middle of life. You have people who are tourists, you know, they're clearly headed out to a cruise ship later that are all queued up to enter Saint Peter's.

You know, and I'm not trying to judge their heart or say that they don't want to pay their respects to the Pope, but do you have you have people vacationing and touring, you have people who have come really to mourn, and you have people just trying to live their everyday lives.

And all of that kind of coalesces and comes together in what I think is really a remarkable demonstration of faith that, that's what faith is both the highest and lowest of things --

COOPER: I want to talk about that faith because there is this -- there's the sadness of his death, and yet there's also for those who believe, there's the joy in what awaits him and what he believed awaited him. And he wrote about this in the foreword to this book that's being published this week by another cardinal and I just find it so fascinating.

He wrote, "Death is not the end of everything, but the beginning of something, a new beginning," he called it, "Because we will experience something that we have never fully experienced: eternity." What do those words mean to you?

FATHER BRISCOE: Christian hope is about looking forward, and I think we have a great example here in the middle of the Jubilee Year, because one of the last powerful visuals we have of Pope Francis is the opening of the Jubilee doors.

When you think about a door opening, you think of going into some place going in where you've not been before. And when we think about our entrance into eternal life as Christians, the door is a beautiful metaphor that something is opening to us, that there's a new possibility, a way in that that was previously closed to us, a path we couldn't follow.

And when we see Pope Francis having given so much of his life to this final hope, our confidence is buoyed in it, I think.

COOPER: I feel like I've discovered in the last few years that you can still have a relationship with somebody who's died, and that relationship can change, and you can even grow to know somebody. My father, for instance, who died when I was a child, I know him better now than I did as a child. That's embedded in the faith, is it not?

FATHER BRISCOE: Absolutely, and I think there's a sense of an ongoing conversation. Certainly, we have we have Pope Francis' writings which are going to stay with us and his many spontaneous comments which will bring us a smile and comfort or frustrate, depending on the person. But all of that, all of that creates memory, which we continue to carry with us.

And then even more than that, in the Catholic tradition, we continue to pray for the dead so that a soul would experience peace. And it allows us to know this belief, it allows us to know that what has ended here on this life isn't really the end of the story. We say in the Catholic funeral liturgy that life is changed, not ended.

COOPER: Christopher, you and I talked about this earlier as we were covering the procession very early this morning. I was fascinated at how Pope Francis chose to show himself as he faded, as his body broke down. He didn't hide himself in a wheelchair. He showed himself for years in a wheelchair. Other Popes didn't do that. He wanted to be seen. He died. He wanted to show us, I feel like, how to die.

LAMB: I think that's right and it's very important for the Pope to embrace that fragility, that frailty, in a way that was part of his ministry in those final years -- a message to the world. Of course, he talked a lot about the danger of a society that has a throwaway culture, particularly the elderly, those who are disabled, those --

COOPER: We hide the elderly, the disabled away.

LAMB: And he wanted to say, no, that's not the way to go. He always told young people, talk to your grandparents. He said, you know, if there's one thing you can do, do that. Speak to your grandparents. He was very much about the wisdom of age, and he wanted to embrace that without trying to hide away from the difficulties.

COOPER: There's such -- I think there's such power for that in that, for people who are aged, for people who are suffering, for people who are grieving to see the way he died as sort of a model.

FATHER BRISCOE: There's a beautiful symbol in Pope Francis lying in the casket because he's clothed in red vestments. In the Catholic Liturgy, red is the color for celebrating a martyr, for someone who gives their life over for Christ. It's the greatest thing you can give. So red is the color of blood.

Now, Pope Francis wasn't a martyr in one sense. He didn't die a death for Christ, that it was a contested way and the way we traditionally think of as a martyr. But you can certainly say he was a martyr for charity, that he gave his life to the service of the church, and that giving over, I think, again, allows us to feel so connected to him.

COOPER: Father Briscoe, thank you so much, Christopher Lamb as well, I appreciate it.

Some of the Pope's final public words, as we reported last night, were published yesterday in an op-ed calling for peace between Israel and Palestinians and a two-state solution.

Throughout his papacy, Francis made a point of reaching out to communities of all faiths and words, but most notably in deeds, and not just as the leader of an institution, but personally as well. CNN's Clarissa Ward has the story of Muslim refugees from Syria and how Pope Francis changed their lives. Take a look.

[20:10:33]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): It was a day Wafaa Id (ph) will never forget, arriving on Italian soil with Pope Francis on his personal plane.

WARD (on camera): And how were you feeling in this moment?

(CLARISSA WARD speaking in foreign language.)

(WAFAA ID speaking in foreign language.)

WARD (on camera): "We felt safe."

(WAFAA ID speaking in foreign language.)

WARD (voice over): Safe, for the first time since leaving war torn Syria. Wafaa, her husband and their two children were among three families assisted by the Catholic Charity Santegidio, to lead the Lesbo's refugee camp in Greece and start a new life in Italy. Their host, the Pope himself.

(WAFAA ID speaking in foreign language.)

WARD (voice over): "He came to greet each one of us," she tells us. "And he placed a hand on my son Omar's head."

How did you feel? I asked her. "A dream," she says. "It was like a dream."

Back in Rome, Pope Francis invited the families to lunch as they settled in.

(WAFAA ID speaking in foreign language)

(CLARISSA WARD speaking in foreign language.)

WARD (voice over): She remembers him as calm and kind.

(WARD speaking in foreign language.)

(WAFAA ID speaking in foreign language.)

WARD: He's smiling so nicely.

WARD (voice over): Wafaa and her children have now been in Italy for nine years. As the political tide has turned against welcoming refugees, she is acutely aware of how fortunate they are.

WARD (on camera): What do you think that Pope Francis saw that other leaders did not?

(WAFAA ID speaking in foreign language.)

WARD (voice over): "In my opinion, he saw that refugees are also humans," she said. "That they are people. They feel they get sick, they have families, and they also have a right to live well."

WARD (voice over): If you had the opportunity to speak to Pope Francis one more time before he had died, what would you like him to know?

(WAFAA ID speaking in foreign language.)

WARD (voice over): "I would tell him, thank you," she says. "Just thank you."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Clarissa Ward is here with us. Pope Francis came from a family of immigrants who immigrated to Argentina.

WARD: And this was an issue that animated and throughout his entire papacy. His first official visit was to this tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, which was the sort of gateway or entry point of thousands and thousands of refugees and migrants who were trying to get into Europe. It was something he felt passionately about. He talked about the importance of establishing humanitarian corridors, of simplifying the tremendous bureaucracy for these people seeking a better life.

And he also talked as well about this broader trend, what he called the globalization of indifference, whereby people's hearts have become hardened. They had forgotten almost the plight of others, the poor, and particularly those afflicted by conflict.

This was something even up to 2016, when President Trump was in office and in this implicit rebuke to President Trump, he said, anyone who is focused on building walls and not building bridges is not a real Christian.

So, he felt very strongly about this issue, and he felt very strongly about it right up until the end of his life -- Anderson.

COOPER: Yes and we'll talk with Maggie Haberman shortly about President Trump's visit. He's coming here for the funeral.

Clarissa Ward, thank you so much, appreciate it.

Coming up next, we'll have more on the Pope's outreach across faiths. We'll be joined by Bruce Feiler, the author of "Walking The Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books Of Moses."

And later a report from Argentina, the home of Pope Francis. And as you'll see, the soccer team he spent a lifetime rooting for.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:18:39]

COOPER: Saint Peter's Basilica tonight, quiet now. The final mourners of the night inside. The Square has been shut down. Viewing begins again in just a few hours at seven local time. And we expect again thousands and thousands of people to line up tomorrow.

Joining us now is Bruce Feiler, author of the best-selling "Walking The Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books Of Moses." Also, "Life Is In The Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age."

Bruce, it's good to see you. I'm wondering what if you could just talk about your vantage point of Pope Francis and the choice he made to be so open with his frailty at the end, to be so open with the pain he was suffering, and to not hide away, to not -- to let people see him in a wheelchair, to let people see him with a breathing cannula in his nose.

BRUCE FEILER, AUTHOR, "LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS": I think that was a powerful moral example and story that he was sharing with all of us. I think it's almost been lost in a lot of ways. He was a man born in Argentina in the 1930s, when men in particular were taught to conceal and keep private their vulnerabilities. And he stood in front of all of us delivering this message of, this is how you can live and in a way, this is how you can die.

I mean, I listened to your conversation at the top about the idea that death is, you know, death is not the end of everything, it can be the beginning of something. And what I've learned, and this has been a big part of my life, as you know, 12 years ago, I went through a moment like this.

My father had Parkinson's and tried to take his own life six times in 12 weeks. And that sent me in a new direction in my life. And that I've spent the last years, eight years now collecting and analyzing stories of 500 Americans from all walks of life, people who lost loved ones and lost, you know, lost limbs and changed religions and changed, you know, changed careers and got sober and got out of bad marriages.

[20:20:36]

And what I've learned is, in effect, what Pope Francis was teaching us, which is that the idea that were going to have a linear life, okay, with you know, with one job and one home and one relationship from adolescence to assisted living, that's dead.

In fact, we live these nonlinear lives with many twists and turns. I call these life quakes and these life quakes, we go through three to five in our lifetime and they last five years. That means we spend half of our lives in this kind of vulnerable moment of fear and loss and shame and mourning and grief. And if we look at these as just periods that we have to enclose ourselves and lock ourselves off and kind of grit and resilience our way through, we are missing opportunities for what Francis taught us, which is these are an end.

We do have to mourn the past and say goodbye and accept that that old life is not coming back. But we can in these moments, in these life quakes, make them transitions to periods of growth and renewal and as he taught us, new beginnings.

COOPER: I think this notion that that death is not the end, that there is something there is a new beginning and there is a possibility of eternity. Whether you are a person of the Catholic faith or any faith or not, a spiritual in that sense at all, but the idea that that you can continue to know somebody who has died, you can continue to have relationship with them as people who venerate the Saints and believe that the Saints can intercede in their lives and pray to them and pray for them. I find that very powerful.

FEILER: I think there's two layers that this is working on. One is the Christian idea, as you say, right, that there is an eternal life. Okay. That your story lives on, the memories live on, and that the person who has died can find himself in the arms of the divine. But there's also a powerful teaching to each of us who is losing and going through any moment of difficulty where we have grief of any kind, and we have to decide ourselves as we saw him, do.

My body is weakening, I cannot stand, I cannot walk, but can I pursue? Can I move forward? To me that is the powerful, the powerful teaching that he displayed before us. I mean, what I have found in talking to people who go through these difficult experiences is they go through what I call a meaning vacuum, where you have to rethink and re-imagine what is most important to you.

Remember, he could have stepped down as his predecessor did when his body failed. Okay, but he said, no, my body is failing. But my moral clarity is clear and the voice that I want to have in the world is still sound. And that is an extremely important lesson that when we go through difficult times, we can say this is the most important thing to me and I want to persevere in communicating my meaning, my story, my hope with the with those around me and with the world.

COOPER: Well, the example to of not shunning away illness, not shunning away the elderly, not shunning away those who have forms of disability. I think there's such power in that. Even grief is something that we hide, we feel uncomfortable talking about. People don't really talk about it much, and yet we are all experiencing it, we all will experience it in our lives. I think he led by example in that really every day of his papacy and of his life.

FEILER: Well, first of all, I just would like to acknowledge personally that you have done as much as anybody with a public platform to be open about grief and taught us so much. And so, I want to acknowledge and salute you for that. But let's just look at what's going on in this country.

Okay, next week we're going to mark, okay, a hundred years, excuse me, a hundred days at the end of the -- the first hundred days of the Trump presidency. And if I was going to tell the story of the last hundred days, I would not start with the election or the inauguration.

I would start with February 28th. On that day, Elon Musk, the richest person on the planet with on Joe Rogan, with the biggest platform on the planet and said, and this is a direct quote, "The fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy." He called it. He called it "civilization suicide."

On that day, Pope Francis was in the hospital and the Vatican said it was his worst day. He embodied empathy. He embodied compassion. He, as you just said, and as you've shown us day after day in your coverage, he tended the vulnerable, the weak, the sick, the poor. He knew that the most popular phrase in the Hebrew bible is, "We were strangers once, so we should welcome the strangers."

And at this moment in time, Anderson, when our feeds are busy with division and hate and vitriol and inhumanity, He stood before the world in a failing body and a weakened voice, and he was the voice of compassion, of empathy and humanity.

And that is his legacy and he leaves behind a hole, the one person who could break through the noise and say that we must be human, or there is no civilization, and we are all going to have to work harder in his absence to make sure that we carry on that voice.

[20:25:26]

COOPER: Bruce Feiler, thank you so much for being with us.

FEILER: My pleasure.

COOPER: To something less transcendent now, Pope Francis was famously a huge soccer fan as well, and no team had his loyalty. Like his beloved football club San Lorenzo and Argentina, he was a card carrying member, actually, and just hours ago, the club paid tribute to their most devoted supporter. David Culver was there and joins us now from Buenos Aires. What was it like there, David? DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Anderson,

listening to you and Bruce there, there's actually something I feel like that that comes out from what we've experienced here. And its cliche to say, but the fact that people mourn differently and I wondered, how is the city mourning someone who's so personal and yet who many see as belongs to the world? And it's not been this big outpouring of mass gatherings.

I mean, what we just saw here and we have some video you can see inside, there's been rather these small, intimate, devout, fervent collections of folks. And you see that in pockets throughout the city, and they come together and they, for example, tonight celebrated mass, and they used that word celebrate as intentional. And they see that as celebrating Pope Francis' life. And it may sound like something that's lighthearted and perhaps distinct from anything really that deep, but his love of sport actually is quite profound.

He loved San Lorenzo. This team, and this is the spiritual birthplace, by the way, of where that name came from. And so, that's why the club decided to hold tonight's mass in remembrance here.

But for Pope Francis, it was a step further. He looked at sport and he applied it to young people, Anderson, and he would say, go and engage in activities. And he was a goalkeeper and he saw that as a way to learn how to deal with things coming at him from all different angles later in life. But he said for young people to not be caught up in the virtual world, not to be caught up in their phones, not to be shuttered into the houses, but to be out into the streets.

And he would tell his priests here as cardinal archbishop, he would say, go out and be with the flock. And people tonight feel more than anything else when they look at San Lorenzo and this team, they see a relatability, somebody that they can connect with.

COOPER: And what about the Pope's actual club membership card?

CULVER: So this is funny, and people are talking about this a great deal. There's something that they've made note of and it has to do with the number. And I want you to hear it from the caretaker of this chapel.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSCAR LUCCHINI, CARETAKER OF CHAPEL OF SAN LORENZO DE ALMAGRO SOCCER CLUB (through translator): The day we gave him his membership card, he said he would accept it, but added, I'll pay the fee, he said, he paid his membership fees for the San Lorenzo Club religiously. We handed him the card in person and it had the membership number 88235.

Now, he has passed away at the age of 88, at 2:35 in the morning Argentina time. So we don't know if it's a blessing, a coincidence or something he sent us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CULVER: I talked to one young soccer fan here just a short time ago about that, and he had his own card with him, by the way, and he said for him, it's not a coincidence. He'd rather look at that as something he can hold on to, as he put it, destiny. It was supposed to be that way.

COOPER: David Culver. It's great you're there. Thank you.

Coming up next, "The New York Times'" Maggie Haberman joins us on the President and First Lady's attendance at Saturday's funeral, and who might be in the official delegation with them.

Also, my conversation with Robert Harris, author of "Conclave." It is a fascinating talk about what inspired him to write the book. The movie is based on.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:34:10]

COOPER: Well, President Trump posted this on social media on Monday, Melania and I'll be going to the funeral of Pope Francis, he wrote. In Rome, we look forward to being there. This will mark the first foreign trip of the president's second term. Of course, earlier in the Oval Office, President Trump spoke to reporters about his plans to attend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I'll have a lot of meetings set up. Yeah, we have a couple of people coming. I'll be -- we will announce it probably this evening or tomorrow. The first lady is going and some people are coming with me from staff, but we'll have a number of people going. It's going to be -- I'm sure it's going to be a beautiful ceremony.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Joining us now is New York Times White House Correspondent and CNN Political Analyst, Maggie Haberman. So Maggie, can you just remind people what President Trump's relationship with Pope Francis was like because the Pope said of then candidate Trump in 2016, a person who thinks only about building walls wherever they may be and not building bridges is not Christian.

[20:35:00]

And I know that then Trump replied that the Pope's comments were disgraceful. But in 2017, they had a meeting that he described as fantastic.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah. Look, the block of Catholic voters who have backed Trump are pretty important to his coalition. And so, I think Trump has been fairly mindful of that for some time. You are correct. This didn't start out as, it wasn't even a relationship. It was the Pope voicing a criticism about Trump's behavior and his approach to appealing to people in the U.S. And Trump hit back at the Pope, which I have to say was a first for most of us covering politics. But it's not surprising that he is going to this, that the president is going to this funeral, Anderson. Number one, as I mentioned, the Catholic voters, voting bloc that has backed him as important. Number two, this is a huge global historic event and Trump tends to find appeal in that.

COOPER: When people talk about Pope Francis' character, they obviously talk about a man of deep humility, shunned lavish trappings of the papacy, he prioritized the poor and the marginalized. Did that stark difference ever you think register with President Trump? Was it something you think he gave much thought to?

HABERMAN: No, I do not. I mean, I think this is something that Trump tends to put criticisms in a basket and that has gotten more pronounced over time. And it is basically that everybody who opposes him is against him in some form or another, and is coming at it not from a place of genuine disagreement, but from kind of a place of, usually in his characterization, malevolence. I don't think that the Pope's views about helping the poor and about charity are something that Trump has spent a lot of time lingering on.

COOPER: And President Zelenskyy from Ukraine is coming here with his wife as well. I know he -- this weekend, are there plans for the two to get together?

HABERMAN: I haven't heard of any plans so far, Anderson. And certainly, President Trump attacked President Zelenskyy again today over the peace talks around this effort to try to force a piece between Russia and Ukraine. He has not been as vocally critical of Russia as we know. That's not usually a place to come at an engagement from at a funeral. But I do think that it could force a conversation. And I think that the U.S. believes that they will get Zelenskyy to that place one way or another.

I also think Anderson, there's going to be a lot of world leaders who are going to want pull asides with President Trump over the weekend, just given everything that is happening in terms of Trump's trade war and his efforts with various countries.

COOPER: Is that something you think that will happen actual -- pull asides? I mean, I assume he will be here for -- will he just be here for the funeral? Will he be staying here? Do you know?

HABERMAN: I believe it is just going to be for the funeral, but we'll see. I mean, they haven't announced what the full plan is going to be. They haven't announced who exactly is going with him. I don't believe that he is going to be able to take a very large delegation, but we'll see.

COOPER: How does the president see his relationship with American Catholics?

HABERMAN: The president believes that he has been good to American Catholics the way that he believes that he has to a number of groups. He also has been very critical of Democrats in relation to Catholics. His running mate and now Vice President J.D. Vance has talked about this a lot. Now, but Trump does not tend to talk about religion in a traditional way that we have heard politicians and certainly Republican politicians do so.

Trump talks about religion and he talks about Christianity broadly, primarily through abortion and, and through the pro-life movement, and we have seen this over and over again. But he does not, this is not something that you will hear him be especially well versed in. But if you ask him, he will say he's been very good to Catholics.

COOPER: Maggie Haberman, appreciate your time tonight. Thank you.

Coming up next, my interview with Robert Harris, the author of the book, "Conclave" which led to the Oscar-winning movie. And you might be surprised to learn how he first came up with the idea for writing Conclave, while actually watching Pope Francis and the Cardinals around him on the balcony the very night he was announced as Pope. And later, a remarkable woman, Holocaust survivor Irene Weiss, I want you to hear from her, her stunning story as we mark the annual Days of Remembrance.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:44:07]

COOPER: Well, the process of selecting Pope Francis' successor, known as a conclave, is expected to begin next month. Now, it's a tradition that plays out, as you know, behind closed doors as Cardinals under the age of 80 are sequestered in Vatican City to partake in multiple rounds of secret ballots. You may have seen or heard of the award- winning film "Conclave," which is based on a novel published in 2016 by Robert Harris who became fascinated by the intrigue and the politics at play as various Cardinals vying to choose a new leader for the Catholic Church.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RALPH FIENNES AS CARDINAL THOMAS LAWRENCE, CONCLAVE: You are responsible for this, I believe.

JOHN LITHGOW AS JOSEPH TREMBLAY, CONCLAVE: No, Tremblay, you are.

LAWRENCE: This report is entirely mendacious. It would never have seen the light of day if you had not broken into the Holy Father's apartment to remove it.

TREMBLAY: If the report is mendacious, then why did the Holy Father in his last official act as Pope ask you to resign?

LAWRENCE: He did no such thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[20:45:00]

COOPER: Well, that's a clip from the film I spoke just before airtime to, with author Robert Harris. Mr. Harris, I understand you were actually watching television the night that Pope Francis was -- became the Pope and came out to the balcony. Can you explain what about that moment kind of led to the book that became the movie "Conclave"?

ROBERT HARRIS, AUTHOR OF THE BOOK "CONCLAVE": Yes. I was finishing a trio of novels. I was writing about Cicero, the Roman Statesman, and was watching the scenes as we were waiting for the Pope, the new Pope, to step out onto the balcony. And immediately, before the windows, the high windows on either side of the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square, filled with the faces of the Cardinals who have just elected the new Pope.

And the camera panned along those faces, all elderly men, some looking cunning and crafty, others looking rather benign. And I thought, I'm looking at the Roman Senate actually, it must have looked something like this. And then the new Pope stepped out and the most striking thing about him, I think, was his face, Pope Francis' rather wonderful, friendly, charismatic face. And I thought this must have been quite an election. I wonder what went on behind the scenes to get into this place.

And it started there. As soon as I could, as soon as I finished the Cicero books, I started researching the conclave.

COOPER: What about the conclave, as you did your research, really stood out or fascinated you?

HARRIS: I think that it was much more political than the Vatican generally likes to pretend. Of course, it is. This is 110, 115 really sophisticated men, big political players in their own countries, some of them with followings of millions, tens, even hundreds of millions of people. It's a very sophisticated electorate and it's a highly political process. And for me, I was a political journalist. Most of my novels had to do with politics. This was the greatest election one could possibly cover.

COOPER: It's also so fascinating because, I mean, it's so shrouded in secrecy. Your film has -- I mean, sorry, your book and the film certainly, which I know a lot of people are now watching the film. I know the streaming numbers are through the roof because people don't know much about the conclave, and this is as close as a lot of people are able to get, and through reading your book.

But, Pope Francis has really changed the face, the backgrounds, the population of Cardinals. He has appointed more than two-thirds of the Cardinals who will be voting for the new Pope. And a lot of them, now the majority are from the global South, not from European countries or the United States. What do you think that means for this conclave? Because again, this plays a role in your book as well.

HARRIS: Yeah, well, all conclaves are different. Whoever it's said goes in as the favorite, who goes in a Pope, emerges a Cardinal, i.e., they lose. It's very hard to predict what's going to happen in a conclave. Each one has its own personality. And there's a dynamic as we know to any social interaction where you take more than a hundred people, sequester them, take off their -- take away from them their mobile phones, their laptops, any means of communicating with the outside world, put them in a kind of hostel, the Casa Santa Marta, and then transport them to the Sistine Chapel, and they are stuck there until they come up with a candidate -- a winner. An exhaustive two- thirds ballot is required. You've got to win two-thirds of the vote, and anything can happen actually, and a dynamic takes over.

So, I don't think it's really possible to predict it. Who knows how it may move? What you and I would call in secular elections, momentum, is inside the Vatican in this process called the movement of the Holy Spirit. And somehow, someone just emerges, everyone thinks, yes, you'll do. You are the right person. And that dynamic is very hard to predict. So yes, it may be that it's far more likely that we will get a Pope outside Europe, outside North America, because that frankly is where the numbers are these days in the Catholic Church.

COOPER: It's also so interesting though, in political elections and public elections, you have candidates who state, yes, I want to be president.

[20:50:00]

I want to be a member of Congress. In this, everybody -- nobody really says, I want to be the Pope. I'm the guy for this and sort of puts it out there. You have to kind of -- if you're seen to be campaigning for it, then that's actually going to set you back in a campaign.

HARRIS: Oh yeah, that's a really bad mark. You've got to appear not to want it. That's quite important. If you were to go in saying, Hey, come on guys, vote for me. That would be an absolute disaster. For me as a novelist, this was perfect. There's nothing better than when you write dialog where people aren't really saying what they truly believe.

(LAUGH)

HARRIS: And yeah -- no, there's a lot to that. And --

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: By the way, there's a lot of that going on, not just a novels.

HARRIS: Yes, yes, exactly. So, it's a really fascinating process. And for anyone who's interested in the elections, this is the ultimate election. This is for God's representative on Earth. It is for life. And it's to rule over 1.4 billion people.

COOPER: Mr. Harris, it's such a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.

HARRIS: Pleasure. Thank you.

COOPER: Author Robert Harris. There was a ceremony at Capitol Hill today to mark the Holocaust Days of Remembrance. In a moment, you're going to hear from the remarkable Irene Weiss, who survived in Auschwitz as a 13-year-old girl while most of her family were murdered.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:56:22]

COOPER: At the U.S. Capitol this morning, a solemn ceremony to commemorate the Holocaust during the annual Days of Remembrance ceremony. Coincides with Israel's own Day of Remembrance, which is now underway. And this year marks the 80th anniversary, the end of World War II and the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime.

Tonight, I want you to hear from Irene Weiss. I spoke to her for a 60 minutes report last year and included the interview in an episode of my podcast on grief and loss, called "All There Is." Weiss is now 84- years-old. Her mom, dad, four siblings were murdered at Auschwitz, but she and one of her sisters survived. She is a remarkable person. She's 94. Here's some of what she told me.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IRENE WEISS, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR: There's a lot written about Auschwitz and it will -- can never be fully described. Somebody labeled it a metropolis of death, and that's what it was. It was a metropolis of death. It worked like an assembly line factory and it just ground up people, mainly families, mainly children.

COOPER: How do you live with this?

WEISS: Well, you see, I am 93. There hasn't been a day that I have not lived with it. It's very difficult because to reconcile that man can be so cruel, so like an animal really changes your way of thinking of mankind and life daily. I know that people can turn on you, can turn on you because of a label.

COOPER: The 13-year-old girl that you were, do you still feel that little girl at times, or did you bury her early on in that role (ph)?

WEISS: No, that's a good question. That's really a very good question. I'm stuck there. I am really stuck there. That's really the biggest fight. And that's where all this, the grief is.

COOPER: Have you been able to cry in subsequent years?

WEISS: Still not, still not. People say broken heart, the heart keeps working, but the soul never forgets. There is a soul that does not forget any of it. It's imprinted on the soul that keeps the memory, the pain, the grief. It's just always there.

COOPER: Having seen those things and knowing what man is capable of, even on a beautiful, almost spring day like today, in this nice quiet neighborhood, do you still see everything through that lens?

WEISS: Yes.

COOPER: That all of this can change very quickly?

WEISS: Well, it's subtly and even not so subtly changing as we watch it in this country. Who is the enemy? Who is to be hated? Who is to be excluded? It's happening all the time.

COOPER: Irene Weiss. You can listen to the full interview with Irene --