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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Pope Leo at the Vatican on Thursday morning, in a trip that was all about diplomacy but was actually about cleaning up after President Donald Trump’s latest swipe at America’s first pope.
The meeting followed weeks of Trump’s attacks on Leo over his criticism of the US-Israel war against Iran.
Trump has accused the pope of “putting many Catholics in danger” and has repeatedly suggested, falsely, that Leo supports Iran’s nuclear weapons.
Leo denied that this week, telling reporters outside Castel Gandolfo, near Rome, that the Catholic Church has been against nuclear weapons for years, and that its mission is to preach peace.
“I always believe that it is better to enter into negotiations than looking for weapons and supporting the weapons industry, which earns billions and billions of dollars each year, instead of sitting down at the table, let’s solve our problems,” Leo told the media.
Trump didn’t let the facts get in the way. Speaking on television Wednesday, he repeated this accusation, saying, “It’s about the Pope, and it’s very simple. Whether I please him or not. Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. And he seemed to say they can. And I say they can’t.”
Pope Leo welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the Vatican on Thursday, where they discussed efforts to maintain relations between the US and the Vatican, according to statements from both governments. Rubio’s trip comes amid President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the pope over the Iran war.
The president’s attack on Leo left Rubio, the Catholic national security adviser and Trump, the unenviable task of insisting that this was a normal conversation.
“It’s a trip we’ve been planning since before, and obviously we’ve had some things happen,” Rubio told reporters before the meeting. “We have a lot to discuss with the Vatican.”
The Vatican is hard to abuse
Rubio’s list of discussion topics included religious freedom, the growth of the Catholic Church in Africa and humanitarian aid to Cuba – among the ever-dwindling areas of common interest between Washington and the Vatican.
Vatican analyst and Jesuit priest Thomas Reese said he struggled to find key issues on which the Vatican administration and Trump could work together.
“Maybe religious freedom? But the Trump administration’s definition of religious freedom is very narrow,” Reese said.
He said the biggest challenge for the Vatican is that the current American administration seems to have no foreign policy.
Trump’s biggest challenge, he says, is that the Vatican is too tough to abuse.
“I mean, what are you going to do, tax them? The Vatican doesn’t sell liturgies anymore. Send in the Marines? You have to go through Italy first.”
He met Meloni
After the meeting, the State Department said Rubio and Leo discussed the Middle East and their shared commitment to peace and human dignity. It was a kind of aristocratic language designed to say the least.
Reese says that in reality, there are only a few opportunities left for cooperation. Rubio proposed one: the US is providing 6 million US dollars ($8.2 million Cdn) in aid to Cuba through the Church, and more if the Cuban government agrees to distribute it.
The Rubio-Leo alliance also had a domestic political purpose.
US President Donald Trump is facing a backlash from politicians and Christians after he engaged in a war of words with the Pope over the Iran war and posted an AI-edited photo of him as a Jesus-like figure.
US midterm elections are coming up in the fall and the White House doesn’t want conservative Catholic voters to conclude that Trump is anti-pope, even if the president’s recent comments undermine any such assurances.
On Friday, Rubio will meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni – until recently, one of Trump’s closest allies in Europe. However, Leo’s attack on the US president did not go down well in Italy, where shooting the Pope is rarely a winning strategy.
Meloni, who is now politically weak after losing the constitutional referendum, called Trump’s comments unacceptable. That played well with the Italians, but drew the ire of Trump, who lashed out at Meloni for his refusal to support the US-Israeli war against Iran.
“He surprises me,” Trump told Italian daily Corriere della Sera. “I thought you were brave, but I was wrong.”
Rubio’s task now is to see if there is still enough political warmth to win the support of Meloni, who was once one of Trump’s most ardent supporters.
