Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet on Thursday with Pope Leo XIV and a day later with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, according to the Vatican and the Italian government, in a two-day visit amid tensions between Washington, Rome and the Vatican.<\/p>\n
The State Department later said in a statement that Mr. Rubio would meet with the \u201cHoly See leadership\u201d and \u201cItalian counterparts,\u201d without identifying them by name.<\/p>\n
Mr. Rubio\u2019s meetings will come after President Trump repeatedly denounced the pope<\/a> for criticizing American attacks on Iran and then turned on Ms. Meloni<\/a>, once one of Mr. Trump\u2019s staunchest allies in Europe, for standing by the pontiff.<\/p>\n Tensions between Mr. Trump and Leo, who was elected to the papacy nearly a year ago, began to rise in March, after the pope spoke out against the war in Iran. Leo then criticized people who use Christian teaching to promote war, in what was interpreted as a condemnation<\/a> of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s repeated use of Christian language to justify the attacks.<\/p>\n The tensions evolved into a direct clash between the president and the pontiff in April, when Mr. Trump attacked the pope<\/a> on social media, accusing Leo of being \u201cweak on crime\u201d and \u201ccatering to the Radical Left.\u201d<\/p>\n Then Leo, who had usually avoided mentioning Mr. Trump\u2019s name during his earlier comments, responded directly.<\/p>\n Speaking to reporters at the beginning of a 10-day tour to four African nations<\/a>, Leo said: \u201cI have no fear, neither of the Trump administration, nor of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel. And that\u2019s what I believe I am called here to do.\u201d<\/p>\n The pope\u2019s subsequent speeches on the trip, which condemned authoritarian leadership without naming any particular leader, were then widely interpreted as further criticism<\/a> of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n Though Leo subsequently rejected such an interpretation, Mr. Trump and other American officials continued to lash out at the pope.<\/p>\n Ms. Meloni, who had already distanced herself from Mr. Trump over the Iran war, then came to Leo\u2019s defense, saying, \u201cI find President Trump\u2019s remarks about the Holy Father unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump took aim at Ms. Meloni, saying in an interview<\/a> with an Italian newspaper that he was \u201cshocked by her,\u201d adding, \u201cI thought she was brave, but I was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, Ms. Meloni said she had not spoken to Mr. Trump since their spat but that Italy\u2019s relationship<\/a> with the United States remained \u201csolid.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Motoko Rich contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet on Thursday with Pope Leo XIV and a day later with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6501,5,6505,9717,184,9718,383,27,8967,7193,341,6504,3914],"class_list":{"0":"post-13128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rome","8":"tag-giorgia-1977","9":"tag-italy","10":"tag-leo-xiv","11":"tag-marco","12":"tag-meloni","13":"tag-popes","14":"tag-roman-catholic-church","15":"tag-rome","16":"tag-rubio","17":"tag-state-department","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-international-relations","20":"tag-united-states-politics-and-government"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13128","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=13128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}