"And so it is what is, I guess, but it's very unfortunate," said Milwaukee Archbishop Jeffrey S. Grob. "It's a very serious time."

President Donald Trump posted an artificial intelligence-generated image of himself dressed as pope as the mourning of Pope Francis continues and just days before the conclave to elect his successor is set to begin.

President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated photo showing himself as the pope ahead of this week's gathering of cardinals to choose a new leader of the 1.4-billion-strong Catholic Church, and just days after he joked he would "like to be pope".

The cardinals of the Catholic Church held their ninth in a series of near-daily meetings at the Vatican on Saturday ahead of the election of a new pope.

A cardinal predicted that the selection process for the successor to Pope Francis, who died April 21 at the age of 88, “will be very short.” As cardinals prepare to kick off the conclave week, Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez of El Salvador told ABC News on Friday that the Vatican is looking for “Francis 2.