POPE LEO
On Friday, Leo will mark his first year leading the 1.4 billion-member Catholic Church.
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Here’s what happened during the meeting and whether it’s a sign of a thaw between the Vatican and Washington.
What happened during and after the meeting?
The Vatican said in a statement after the pope’s first meeting with a Trump cabinet member in almost a year amid a tense atmosphere with Washington that Pope Leo and Mr. Rubio “renewed their common determination to promote good bilateral relations.”
It seems that the meeting took longer than planned. The Pope arrived 40 minutes late for a subsequent meeting with Vatican officials and thanked them for their patience.
Rubio also met with Vatican officials, including Italy’s top diplomat, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
The U.S. Embassy in the Holy See wrote in an X post that Mr. Leo and Mr. Rubio discussed “topics of mutual interest in the Western Hemisphere.”
The Vatican statement added that the two sides “exchanged views” on the world situation and discussed “the need to work tirelessly for peace.”
Vatican video at the beginning of the private meeting with Mr. Rubio shows Mr. Leo shaking hands with the guest and formally addressing him as “secretary,” to which Mr. Rubio, a Catholic, responds, “It’s nice to meet you.”
Rubio was also seen giving the pope a small crystal soccer ball. He joked that he knew Leo, a Chicago native and known White Sox fan, was more of a “baseball guy.”
Leo gave Rubio a small pen made from an olive tree, which he called a “plant of peace.”
Rubio said at a White House briefing on Tuesday that he planned to discuss concerns about religious freedom in Cuba and around the world with Leo. U.S. Ambassador to Rome Brian Birch also said Tuesday that the conversation between the pope and Rubio is likely to be “candid.”
On Friday, in a speech in the city of Pompeii to mark his first anniversary as head of the Catholic Church, the pope asked God to encourage leaders to calm their nerves.
“We cannot surrender to the images of death shown on the news every day,” he said.
Why is there a rift with Washington?
Leo, the first American pope, has drawn the ire of President Trump by criticizing the US-Israel war against Iran and the Trump administration’s hard-line anti-immigration policies.
President Trump has launched a series of unprecedented public attacks on the pope in recent weeks, sparking a backlash from Christian leaders across the political spectrum.
On Monday, Trump falsely suggested that Leo believed it was acceptable for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and claimed that he was “putting a lot of Catholics at risk” by opposing the war.
After these remarks, Leo told reporters that he was interested in spreading the Christian message of peace. The Pope categorically rejected the idea of ”supporting nuclear weapons,” which the Catholic Church teaches is immoral.
Prior to his meeting with Leo, Rubio responded to President Trump’s accusation that Leo was “endangering Catholics” over his stance on the Iran war, saying the president’s comments had been misinterpreted.
Asked about Trump’s remarks Tuesday, Rubio told reporters: “Well, I don’t think that’s an accurate description of what he said.”
Leo has been outspoken about events on the world stage in recent weeks.
During a tour of four African countries last month, he criticized the direction of world leaders and said the world was “ravaged by a handful of tyrants,” but later insisted his comments were not aimed directly at Trump.
Rubio is also scheduled to meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Friday. Meloni has strongly defended the pope against President Trump, whose once-close relationship has soured in recent weeks over the Iran war. Defense Secretary Meloni said the Iran war endangers U.S. leadership.
Did the situation settle down with the meeting between Rubio and the Pope?
The meeting between Mr. Rubio and Mr. Leo was a sign of the “strong” relationship between the Vatican and the United States, State Department spokesman Tommy Piggott insisted. Mr. Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance, also a Catholic, met Mr. Leo a year ago after attending the pope’s inaugural mass. Trump has not met the Pope.
But Kenneth Hackett, who led the U.S. Catholic Church’s external relief agency for 18 years before serving as nuncio to the Holy See under former President Barack Obama, told Reuters that subsequent Vatican statements showed “there was no substantive agreement.”
The Vatican statement addresses both Leo and Rubio’s meeting with the Vatican and Rubio’s subsequent meeting with the Vatican, but says only that there was an “exchange of views” on world affairs, and gives no indication of a common agreement other than “building better bilateral relations.”
Peter Martin, a former diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Rome who served under Democratic and Republican administrations, told Reuters that the Vatican’s statement after the meeting “makes clear that there is work to be done at this point.”
Meanwhile, Vatican expert Austin Ivery, who co-authored a book with the late Pope Francis, said the statement’s focus on the need to build bilateral ties suggested that relations between the two countries were “not good at the moment,” Reuters reported.
