Rubio meets Pope Leo: Can they heal White House-Vatican rift?

Pope Leo XIV and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met connected Thursday during the latter’s travel to Rome, with hopes of improving relations betwixt the Vatican and Washington astatine a clip erstwhile United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the pontiff.

On Friday, Leo marks his archetypal twelvemonth starring the 1.4 billion-member Catholic Church.

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Here is what happened during the meeting, and whether it signals a thaw betwixt the Vatican and Washington.

What happened astatine the gathering – and afterwards?

Pope Leo and Rubio “renewed the shared committedness to fostering bully bilateral relations”, the Vatican said successful a connection pursuing the archetypal gathering betwixt the pope and a Trump furniture authoritative successful astir a twelvemonth amid an ambiance of hostility with Washington.

The gathering appeared to person tally longer than planned. The pope arrived 40 minutes precocious for a consequent gathering with Vatican staffers and thanked them for being patient.

Rubio besides met with elder Vatican officials, including apical diplomat Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

The US embassy to the Holy See wrote successful an X station that Leo and Rubio had discussed “topics of communal involvement successful the Western Hemisphere”.

The Vatican connection added that the 2 had “exchanged views” connected the satellite concern and spoke astir “the request to enactment tirelessly successful favour of peace”.

Vatican video from the opening of the closed-door gathering with Rubio showed Leo shaking hands with his impermanent and addressing him formally arsenic “Mr Secretary”, to which Rubio, a Catholic, responded: “Great to spot you.”

Rubio was besides seen giving the pope a tiny crystal football. He joked that helium knew that Leo, primitively from Chicago and known arsenic a instrumentality of the White Sox, was much of a “baseball guy”.

Leo gave Rubio a tiny pen made from wood from an olive tree, which helium called “the works of peace”.

Rubio had told a White House briefing connected Tuesday helium expected to sermon Cuba and concerns implicit spiritual state astir the satellite with Leo. The US ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, said, besides connected Tuesday that the speech betwixt the pope and Rubio was apt to beryllium “frank”.

On Friday, the pope asked God to animate leaders to calm tensions during an code successful the metropolis of Pompei to people his archetypal day arsenic caput of the Catholic Church.

“We cannot resign ourselves to the images of decease that the quality shows america each day,” helium said.

Why is determination a rift with Washington?

Leo, the archetypal American pope, has drawn Trump’s ire with disapproval of the US-Israeli warfare connected Iran and the Trump administration’s hardline anti-immigration policies.

Trump has kept up an unprecedented bid of nationalist attacks connected the pope in caller weeks, drafting a backlash from Christian leaders crossed the governmental spectrum.

On Monday, Trump wrongly suggested that Leo believed it was acceptable for Iran to get atomic weapons and claimed that helium was “endangering a batch of Catholics” by opposing the war.

Leo told journalists aft those remarks that helium is acrophobic with spreading the Christian connection of peace. The pope firmly rejected the thought that helium “supported atomic weapons”, which the Catholic Church teaches are immoral.

Ahead of his gathering with Leo, Rubio pushed back aft Trump accused Leo of “endangering Catholics” implicit his stance connected the Iran war, saying the US president’s remarks had been mischaracterised.

“Well, I don’t deliberation that’s an close statement of what helium said,” Rubio told reporters connected Tuesday erstwhile asked astir Trump’s comments.

For his part, Leo has been outspoken astir events connected the satellite signifier successful caller weeks.

During a four-nation African circuit past month, helium decried the absorption of planetary enactment and said the satellite was “being ravaged by a fistful of tyrants”, successful comments helium aboriginal claimed were not aimed straight astatine Trump.

Rubio besides connected Friday is owed to conscionable Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has powerfully defended the pope from Trump and whose once-close narration with Trump has deteriorated implicit the Iran warfare successful caller weeks. Meloni’s defence curate has said the warfare successful Iran puts US enactment astatine risk.

Has the Rubio-Pope gathering patched things up?

Rubio’s gathering with Leo is simply a motion of a “strong” narration betwixt the Vatican and the US, State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott claimed. Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, who is besides a Catholic, met Leo a twelvemonth agone aft attending the pope’s inaugural mass. Trump has not met the pontiff.

But Kenneth Hackett, person of the US Catholic Church’s overseas alleviation bureau for 18 years earlier serving arsenic ambassador to the Holy See nether erstwhile President Barack Obama, told Reuters the Vatican connection afterwards indicated that “there were nary substantive agreements”.

While the Vatican connection covered some the Leo-Rubio brushwood and Rubio’s aboriginal Vatican meetings, it said simply that determination had been an “exchange of views” connected the satellite situation, giving nary denotation of communal statement different than “building amended bilateral relations”.

Peter Martin, a erstwhile diplomat astatine the US embassy to the Holy See, who served during some Democratic and Republican administrations, told Reuters that the Vatican’s connection aft the gathering “makes it wide that, astatine present, determination is enactment to do”.

Meanwhile, Austen Ivereigh, a Vatican specializer who co-wrote a publication with the precocious Pope Francis, said the statement’s absorption connected the request to physique bilateral relations suggested “that they are astatine the infinitesimal not good”, Reuters reported.