US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held crunch war talks in the heart of the Vatican minutes before the start of the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday, as the White House mounts an increasingly urgent push to strike a peace deal in Ukraine.

The president got a front-row seat to Pope Francis’s funeral Saturday. But that particular seat wasn’t the one that mattered most.

During his whirlwind trip to Italy, President Trump’s interactions with world leaders, as they paid their respects to Francis, were being watched closely.