WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed the idea that his upcoming trip to Italy this week is an effort to smooth recently inflamed tensions between the U.S. and the Vatican amid the war in Iran, even as President Donald Trump offered a fresh round of criticism of Pope Leo XIV.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed the idea that his upcoming trip to Italy this week is an effort to smooth recently inflamed tensions between the U.S. and the Vatican amid the war in Iran
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Rubio\u2019s portrayal of the trip came not long after\u00a0President Donald Trump offered a fresh round of criticism of Pope Leo XIV\u00a0
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The U.S. State Department Monday\u00a0announced the plans\u00a0to send Rubio to Rome from Wednesday to Friday as part of an effort to \u201cadvance bilateral relations with Italy and the Vatican”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Vatican announced the pope would meet with Rubio Thursday\u00a0
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The announcement came after tensions flared last month when Trump took to Truth Social to issue a fierce rebuke of Leo, who has been critical of the conflict in Iran and called for peace<\/p>\n
Rubio made the comments Tuesday in the White House briefing room, where he took the place of press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave. The secretary of state told reporters his travels to Rome and Vatican City was a trip \u201cwe had planned from before,\u201d presumably in a reference to Trump and the pope\u2019s public back-and-forth last month, and painted his visit as part of \u201cnormal\u201d engagements with the church.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the trip is really not tied to anything other than the fact that it would be normal for us to engage with them,\u201d Rubio said. \u201cAnd other secretary states have done that in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
He acknowledged that the pope is not just a religious figure but also the \u201chead of a nation state,\u201d and said he has \u201ca lot\u201d to talk to Leo about, specifically mentioning the pope’s recent trip to Africa and joint efforts to deliver aid to people in Cuba.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe worked with the Catholic Church on the distribution of humanitarian aid in Cuba,\u201d Rubio noted. \u201cWe share with the Catholic Church a concern about the destruction of religious liberty, the persecution of Christian minorities, and also the challenges that are being faced by Christians in Africa, where the pope just recently visited.\u201d<\/p>\n Rubio\u2019s portrayal of the trip came not long after Trump reignited his criticism of the first U.S.-born pope when he told conservative political commentator Hugh Hewitt in an interview that Leo was making people less safe with his comments on the situation in Iran.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think he\u2019s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people,\u201d Trump said, according to a transcript of the interview<\/a>. \u201cBut I guess if it\u2019s up to the pope, he thinks it\u2019s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n The pope responded to the latest spate of criticism<\/a> from Trump Tuesday by telling reporters in Italy that the \u201cmission of the Church is to proclaim the Gospel, to preach peace.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf someone wants to criticize me for proclaiming the Gospel, let him do so truthfully,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Leo also directly addressed Trump\u2019s claim about Iran and nuclear weapons, saying: \u201cFor years, the Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons, so there is no doubt on that point.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Nonetheless, he expressed optimism that there would be \u201cgood dialogue” during the secretary of state\u2019s visit and echoed Rubio somewhat in saying he didn\u2019t believe the current issues were what he was coming for.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think the issues he is coming for are not today\u2019s issues. We shall see,\u201d Leo said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Asked about the president\u2019s comments on Leo endangering Catholics, Rubio, who is Catholic himself, appeared to dismiss the question as not an \u201caccurate description of what he said.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The U.S. State Department Monday announced the plans<\/a> to send Rubio to Rome from Wednesday to Friday as part of an effort to \u201cadvance bilateral relations with Italy and the Vatican.\u201d The Vatican announced the pope would meet with Rubio in the Vatican\u2019s Apostolic Palace at 11:30 a.m. local time on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Among the topics the State Department said would be discussed with Holy See leadership were \u201cthe situation in the Middle East and mutual interests in the Western Hemisphere\u201d while it said meetings with Italian counterparts would focus on \u201cshared security interests and strategic alignment.\u201d<\/p>\n The announcement came after tensions flared last month when Trump took to Truth Social to issue a fierce rebuke of Leo, who has been critical of the conflict in Iran and called for peace.<\/p>\n In an initial post, Trump referred to the head of the Catholic church \u2014 who is the first person born in the U.S. to hold the position \u2014 as weak and terrible for foreign policy, later telling reporters that he would not apologize for his comments.\u00a0<\/p>\n The pope in response declared that he is not afraid of \u201cthe Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel.\u201d<\/p>\n The strain also bled into Trump\u2019s relations with Italy and its prime minister Giorgia Meloni \u2013 who has previously had a friendly relationship with the U.S. president. Trump told an Italian news outlet,<\/a> Corriere della Sera, that Meloni was unacceptable after she expressed criticism over his rebukes of the pope.<\/p>\n The Trump administration and the Vatican have seen disputes over policy in the past. Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism and is set to release a book<\/a> on his faith journey in June, met with the previous pontiff,<\/a> Pope Francis, a year ago in Vatican City at a time in which tensions were particularly charged over the administration’s immigration policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed the idea that his upcoming trip to Italy this week is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9681,9687,9684,9686,9682,9683,1215,5,9688,9689,2940,9685],"class_list":{"0":"post-13012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-italy","8":"tag-all-markets-rank-everywhere","9":"tag-app-dc-bureau","10":"tag-app-for-your-consideration","11":"tag-app-international","12":"tag-app-national-politics","13":"tag-app-top-stories","14":"tag-international","15":"tag-italy","16":"tag-maddie-gannon","17":"tag-nnt","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-washington-dc-bureau"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}