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Relations between the U.S. and the Catholic Church have not been the same since January, when senior U.S. defense officials shared an abrasive message with a Vatican official.<\/p>\n
Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican\u2019s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe United States,\u201d Colby said, according to a blistering new report by <\/span>The Free Press<\/i><\/a>, \u201chas the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France.<\/span><\/p>\n The Trump administration had taken issue with the pope\u2019s critique of its militaristic proclivities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Pentagon officials were particularly aggrieved by portions of Leo\u2019s <\/span>January 9 speech<\/a> in which the pope argued that \u201ca diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,\u201d and that \u201cwar is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The pope\u2019s address was dissected line by line and interpreted as a hostile message toward the administration, <\/span>reported<\/a> Letters from Leo Substack writer Christopher Hale.<\/span><\/p>\n It was difficult not to interpret Leo\u2019s comments as an immediate commentary on Donald Trump\u2019s second administration, which had at that point bombed Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, kidnapped Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, fiercely advocated for the dissolution of NATO, and threatened America\u2019s allies, including claiming that the U.S. would seize control of Canada and Greenland.<\/span><\/p>\n But the blatant intimidation tactic is the first of its kind ever made by American officials to the Catholic Church. There are no public records of any previous meetings between Vatican and U.S. officials at the Pentagon, let alone an instance in which the world power suggested that it could force the Bishop of Rome into captivity.<\/span><\/p>\n The Vatican was so alarmed by the Pentagon\u2019s warning that Pope Leo cancelled his plans to visit the U.S. later in the year, reported Hale, who noted that \u201cmany in the Vatican saw the Pentagon\u2019s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Tensions had not been mended by February, when the Holy See rejected the White House\u2019s invitation to host Pope Leo\u2014the religious order\u2019s first U.S.-born pontiff\u2014for America\u2019s 250th anniversary in July. Instead, the Catholic leader has arranged to visit a very different locale on July 4: Lampedusa, a tiny island between Tunisia and Sicily where North African immigrants wash ashore by the thousands.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRobert Francis Prevost is too deliberate a man to have chosen that date by accident,\u201d commented Hale.<\/span><\/p>\n The White House has dismissed the entire account, writing in a statement<\/a> to reporter Barbara Starr that \u201cthe Free Press\u2019s characterization of the meeting is highly exaggerated and distorted.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe meeting between Pentagon and Vatican officials was a respectful and reasonable discussion,\u201d the Defense Department official continued. \u201cWe have nothing but the highest regard and welcome continued dialogue with the Holy See.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This story has been updated.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Relations between the U.S. and the Catholic Church have not been the same since January, when senior U.S. defense officials shared an abrasive message with a Vatican official. Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican\u2019s U.S. representative, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Pentagon-Threatened-the-Pope-After-He-Criticized-Trump.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26757,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26755\/revisions\/26757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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