Marco Rubio travels to Rome to mend relations with Pope Leo XIV and Giorgia Meloni

Washington.- U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio departed this Wednesday for Rome with the aim of re-establishing relations with Pope Leo XIV and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, following harsh criticism from Donald Trump.

Rubio, of Catholic confession, will arrive on Thursday morning in the Italian capital and will travel to the Vatican to have an audience with the pontiff, while on Friday he will be received by Meloni before returning to Washington. Leo XIV, the first American pope in history, who, even before his election a year ago, had criticized Trump’s immigration policies, has maintained a distant disagreement with the Republican president, this time over the war in Iran.

On April 7, the Pope called the US president’s threat to end “an entire civilization” in his war against Iran “unacceptable,” to which the president responded by calling him “weak” and “terrible at foreign policy.” The Republican also shared on his social media a picture generated with artificial intelligence in which he was depicted as Jesus Christ, something that outraged part of the Catholic community.

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Trump’s new attack on the Pope

A week later, Leo XIV closed the matter by assuring that he does not fear the Trump Administration nor is he interested in debating with the president. However, Trump lashed out at the Pope again this week, when Rubio’s trip to the Vatican had already been officially announced, and accused him of “endangering many Catholics” because “he believes it is okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon”. In a press conference on Tuesday at the White House, Rubio denied that the trip to Italy is motivated by that clash and revealed that he wants to discuss with the Pope the distribution of humanitarian aid in Cuba, given that the Vatican has been a mediator between Washington and Havana for years. The person in charge of re-establishing relations with the Holy See is Rubio and not the vice president, JD Vance, the highest-ranking Catholic figure in the Administration, who also criticized the Pope by saying that he should focus on theology and not politics. Both Rubio and Vance met last year with Leo XIV in the Vatican at the beginning of his pontificate.

Tensions with Meloni

The confrontation with the pontiff has also strained the relationship with Meloni’s Italian government, considered until now one of Trump’s main allies in Europe. The Prime Minister defended the Pope against attacks from the US President, to which Trump responded by calling her stance “unacceptable”. «It is she who is unacceptable because she doesn’t care if Iran has a nuclear weapon and would blow up Italy in two minutes if she had the chance», the Republican leader lashed out.

Tension has increased even more following the refusal of European countries to join the United States in a military operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, blocked by Iran, so Trump has threatened to reduce the US troops deployed in Italy, Spain and Germany. Meloni defended this Monday that she does not share that decision and argued that Italy “has always respected its commitments and the agreements signed” with its allies, even when its direct interests were not at stake.