ROME — Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to meet Thursday with Pope Leo XIV with relations between the Vatican and the White House at a low point over President Donald Trump’s repeated, direct criticism of the U.S.-born pontiff who has emerged as a leading global critic of the war in Iran and of the administration’s invocation of God in pursuing military action that has resulted in the deaths of thousands.
Trump’s criticism, including a broadside on social media Monday, has fomented an unprecedented rift that now divides the world’s leading political superpower and the leadership of its largest Christian faith.
Publicly, both sides have sought to minimize the rift, but the Holy See, in its stoic way, has taken deep offense at Trump’s missives even as the still-novice pope has risen to the challenge posed by the unorthodox president and his unpredictable utterances.
Asked if the breach between the United States and the Vatican is at its widest point, a senior Vatican official said: “Vatican diplomacy wouldn’t say that, but in formal terms, I think it’s fairly obvious.”
Speaking of Trump’s sharp criticism of Leo, the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order speak frankly about sensitive diplomacy, added: “I don’t think such tones have ever been used.”
“There is a rhetorical tension that could discourage conversation — a theatrical conflict that we can still move past very quickly,” the official said. “It’s in both sides’ best interests that a high-quality conversation should be had.”
Rubio’s visit to meet the pope — his second in just under a year — marks an unusually high level of engagement for a secretary of state and the leader of the Catholic Church. Rubio, who is also the acting White House national security adviser, is one of only a handful of practicing Catholics to have served as America’s top diplomat.
John F. Kerry, who was raised Catholic but had public disagreements with the church on abortion and some other issues, met twice with Pope Francis while secretary of state in the Obama administration and twice while serving as climate envoy during the Biden administration.
Francis met with Mike Pompeo, an evangelical Christian and secretary of state during the first Trump administration, in 2019. However, the late Argentine pope declined a second meeting with Pompeo the following year, citing impending U.S. elections.
The Iran war — and Trump’s attacks — have emerged as the catalyst of Leo’s evolution. One year into his papacy, he has transformed in recent weeks from the “quiet pope” to a more forceful, outspoken figure.
The view from Vatican City is that, in Leo, Trump has met perhaps his greatest antagonist, one potentially more damaging to Republican interests than virtually any other of the president’s many targets of vitriol. In a manner shockingly persistent for a pope, Leo repeatedly has responded to Trump, calling out falsehoods, preaching peace and what he describes as the “true Gospel” with humble reserve.
It is, perhaps, a role that some cardinals envisioned when they elected Robert Francis Prevost, a native son of Chicago and adoptive citizen of Peru, some three and half months after Trump’s second inauguration to be the first American pope.
Some MAGA Catholics have quibbled with Leo’s interpretations of the Gospel, arguing that he is being too dichotomous about God’s will never backing war. But Leo has also found himself swimming downstream, carried by a tide of public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic that is resoundingly opposed to the Iran war.
For Trump, the spat with Leo — like the Iran war — has provided distraction from unwanted headlines on, say, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. But as the midterm elections approach, the president’s poll numbers are tanking and his support among U.S. Catholics — a constituency he overwhelming won in 2024 — has plunged by 10 percentage points, to 38 percent, compared to 2024, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
The same poll found that two-thirds of Americans surveyed reacted positively to Leo asking Americans to contact Congress to work for peace and reject war. Nearly 60 percent responded negatively to Trump’s false claim that the pope said“it’s okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, told The Washington Post that the White House is aware that sidelining the church is not a viable option.
“With the midterm elections approaching, there is growing pressure to reconnect with Catholic voters — a key component of the MAGA coalition — many of whom have become unsettled by the present strains and disagreements,” Spadaro said.
For the Vatican, Trump’s still notable support among conservative American Catholics is an important consideration given the U.S. Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest in the world, and helps finance charitable endeavors and other Holy See operations. By nature, defusing tension is also the Vatican’s default diplomatic strategy.
The meeting between Leo and Rubio is set to be their second. A day after the pope’s Inauguration Mass last May, Rubio joined Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, for a private audience at the Vatican. Vatican officials privately call Rubio a logical Trump emissary, and assess him to be more diplomatic and nuanced than the vice president.
Ahead of the trip, Rubio said his audience with Leo was arranged before the recent dust-ups, though he conceded that “we had some stuff that happened” since the meeting was arranged. Rubio and the Vatican have said there are other practical points of discussion, including the Middle East, the persecution of Christians and the situation in Cuba, where the Catholic Church has significant influence, and attempts to distribute U.S.-funded aid have been stymied.
“Look, I mean, the pope is obviously the vicar of Christ as a Roman Catholic, you know, but he’s also the head of a nation-state for, you know, and it’s an organization that has a presence in over 100-something countries around the world,” Rubio said ahead of the trip. “And we engage with the Vatican quite a bit because they’re present in many different places.”
The Vatican was less circumspect about the evident tension and said it would be addressed with Rubio.
“Well, we’ll listen to him,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, told journalists Wednesday. “The initiative came from them, so we’ll see. Then, I imagine we’ll talk about everything that’s happened in recent days. We couldn’t possibly not touch on these topics.”
Asked about Trump’s comments about the pope, Parolin said: “Attacking him this way, or criticizing what he does, seems a little odd to me, at the very least. A little odd.” He added, however, that if Rubio delivered a request for a call between Trump and Leo, “I imagine [Leo] would have no problem accepting it.”
On Friday, Rubio is set to meet senior Italian officials including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, an ally of Trump’s whom he has recently turned against. Meloni also has grown increasingly willing to criticize the president — chiding Trump, for instance, for his attacks on Leo.
The administration is dispatching Rubio as tensions also simmer over Trump’s frustration with the negative European response to the Iran war, to his plans to withdraw some U.S. troops from Germany in the next year and his threat to raise tariffs on European cars this week. The moves further strain U.S. relations with Europe — a split that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has described as “the ongoing disintegration of the Western alliance.”
Trump has also warned that the U.S. could curb its presence in Europe “a lot further,” and signaled that he might withdraw troops from Spain and Italy, nations that have declined the use of their bases for the war in Iran. Last month, Trump blasted Meloni in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, saying: “I thought she had courage, but I was wrong.”
One thing the Italians aren’t doing is groveling. They have played down the notion of a rift, but been sober about a fundamental shift in Trump’s commitment to Europe and the threat of a U.S. troop withdrawal.
“We know that the U.S. has long been discussing its disengagement from Europe, which is why I think we need to strengthen our security and increase our ability to respond to this,” Meloni said this week. “That said, it’s a choice beyond my control, and I personally wouldn’t agree with it.”
A senior Italian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking, said the Italians view Rubio’s trip first and foremost as a bid to mend ties with the Vatican.
“Regardless of my fondness for the U.S., I don’t believe U.S. troops have been kept in Italy — from the postwar years until today — out of love for the country,” the official said. “It’s in America’s best geopolitical interest to have a military presence in Italy.”
Adam Taylor in Washington and Ellen Francis in Brussels contributed to this report.
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