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

Pope Leo XIV and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met on Thursday during the latter’s trip to Rome, with hopes of improving relations between the Vatican and Washington at a time when United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the pontiff.

On Friday, Leo marks his first year leading the 1.4 billion-member Catholic Church.

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list 1 of 3Rubio defends Trump remarks on Pope Leo amid Iran war
list 2 of 3Shoot Palestinians, not settlers: Israeli general exposes double standard
list 3 of 3US says Pope-Rubio talks underscore ‘strong relationship’ with Vatican

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

What happened at the meeting – and afterwards?

Pope Leo and Rubio “renewed the shared commitment to fostering good bilateral relations”, the Vatican said in a statement following the first meeting between the pope and a Trump cabinet official in nearly a year amid an atmosphere of tension with Washington.

The meeting appeared to have run longer than planned. The pope arrived 40 minutes late for a subsequent meeting with Vatican staffers and thanked them for being patient.

Rubio also met with senior Vatican officials, including top diplomat Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

The US embassy to the Holy See wrote in an X post that Leo and Rubio had discussed “topics of mutual interest in the Western Hemisphere”.

The Vatican statement added that the two had “exchanged views” on the world situation and spoke about “the need to work tirelessly in favour of peace”.

Vatican video from the beginning of the closed-door meeting with Rubio showed Leo shaking hands with his guest and addressing him formally as “Mr Secretary”, to which Rubio, a Catholic, responded: “Great to see you.”

Rubio was also seen giving the pope a small crystal football. He joked that he knew that Leo, originally from Chicago and known as a fan of the White Sox, was more of a “baseball guy”.

Leo gave Rubio a small pen made from wood from an olive tree, which he called “the plant of peace”.

Rubio had told a White House briefing on Tuesday he expected to discuss Cuba and concerns over religious freedom around the world with Leo. The US ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, said, also on Tuesday that the conversation between the pope and Rubio was likely to be “frank”.

On Friday, the pope asked God to inspire leaders to calm tensions during an address in the city of Pompei to mark his first anniversary as head of the Catholic Church.

“We cannot resign ourselves to the images of death that the news shows us every day,” he said.

Why is there a rift with Washington?

Leo, the first American pope, has drawn Trump’s ire with criticism of the US-Israeli war on Iran and the Trump administration’s hardline anti-immigration policies.

Trump has kept up an unprecedented series of public attacks on the pope in recent weeks, drawing a backlash from Christian leaders across the political spectrum.

On Monday, Trump wrongly suggested that Leo believed it was acceptable for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons and claimed that he was “endangering a lot of Catholics” by opposing the war.

Leo told journalists after those remarks that he is concerned with spreading the Christian message of peace. The pope firmly rejected the idea that he “supported nuclear weapons”, which the Catholic Church teaches are immoral.

Ahead of his meeting with Leo, Rubio pushed back after Trump accused Leo of “endangering Catholics” over his stance on the Iran war, saying the US president’s remarks had been mischaracterised.

“Well, I don’t think that’s an accurate description of what he said,” Rubio told reporters on Tuesday when asked about Trump’s comments.

For his part, Leo has been outspoken about events on the world stage in recent weeks.

During a four-nation African tour last month, he decried the direction of global leadership and said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants”, in comments he later claimed were not aimed directly at Trump.

Rubio also on Friday is due to meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has strongly defended the pope from Trump and whose once-close relationship with Trump has deteriorated over the Iran war in recent weeks. Meloni’s defence minister has said the war in Iran puts US leadership at risk.

Has the Rubio-Pope meeting patched things up?

Rubio’s meeting with Leo is a sign of a “strong” relationship between the Vatican and the US, State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott claimed. Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, who is also a Catholic, met Leo a year ago after attending the pope’s inaugural mass. Trump has not met the pontiff.

But Kenneth Hackett, leader of the US Catholic Church’s foreign relief agency for 18 years before serving as ambassador to the Holy See under former President Barack Obama, told Reuters the Vatican statement afterwards indicated that “there were no substantive agreements”.

While the Vatican statement covered both the Leo-Rubio encounter and Rubio’s later Vatican meetings, it said merely that there had been an “exchange of views” on the world situation, giving no indication of common agreement other than “building better bilateral relations”.

Peter Martin, a former diplomat at the US embassy to the Holy See, who served during both Democratic and Republican administrations, told Reuters that the Vatican’s statement after the meeting “makes it clear that, at present, there is work to do”.

Meanwhile, Austen Ivereigh, a Vatican specialist who co-wrote a book with the late Pope Francis, said the statement’s focus on the need to build bilateral relations suggested “that they are at the moment not good”, Reuters reported.

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