{"id":770468,"date":"2026-05-03T13:24:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T13:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/770468\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T13:24:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T13:24:15","slug":"uss-rubio-to-visit-italy-after-trumps-spats-with-meloni-pope-leo-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/770468\/","title":{"rendered":"US\u2019s Rubio to visit Italy after Trump\u2019s spats with Meloni, Pope Leo \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

The visit comes just weeks after Trump attacked Pope Leo over the Catholic leader\u2019s anti-war rhetoric, calling him \u201cWeak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons\u201d<\/a> and \u201cterrible for Foreign Policy.\u201d That came after \u00a0Leo wrote on X<\/a>\u00a0 that \u201cGod does not bless any conflict.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump also shared an AI-generated image of himself as a Christ-like figure. Following rebukes from religious circles and some of his\u00a0political allies<\/a>, Trump removed the image<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump also dismissed Prime Minister Meloni \u2014 who has been one of his closest European allies \u2014 as lacking courage after she defended the pontiff.<\/p>\n

For his part, the pope responded to Trump\u2019s criticism by saying he had\u00a0\u201cno fear\u201d<\/a>\u00a0of the White House and would not be silenced.<\/p>\n

Rubio met with Leo, the first American pope, in May last year, alongside U.S. Vice President JD Vance after the two attended the new pontiff\u2019s inaugural Mass in St. Peter\u2019s Square.<\/p>\n

There is no indication at this point whether Rubio will meet directly with the pope this week or with Meloni. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The visit comes just weeks after Trump attacked Pope Leo over the Catholic leader\u2019s anti-war rhetoric, calling him…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":770469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[109939,20936,113,262,69,3350,37440,133606,83,285141,2219,2066,410,398,50,375,3417,124339,5409,67,3419,131,103],"class_list":["post-770468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-antonio-tajani","tag-catholic","tag-conflict","tag-defense","tag-donald-trump","tag-foreign-policy","tag-giorgia-meloni","tag-guido-crosetto","tag-iran","tag-italian-politics","tag-italy","tag-jd-vance","tag-marco-rubio","tag-media","tag-news","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-pope-leo-xiv","tag-populism","tag-u-s-politics","tag-united-states","tag-vatican","tag-war","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116510868661065894","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}