Rubio faces challenge in Pope Leo meeting after Trump's criticism over Iran

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio is heading to the Vatican and Italy on a fence-mending visit after President Donald Trump’s broadsides against Pope Leo XIV and the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran have alienated those allies.

Rubio, a practicing Catholic, will have an audience with Leo on Thursday, which was complicated at the last minute by Trump’s latest criticism of the Chicago-born pope. Leo has pushed back, calling out Trump’s misrepresentations of his views on Iran and nuclear weapons and insisting that he is merely preaching the biblical message of peace.

Meetings Friday with Premier Giorgia Meloni and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani might not be much easier for America's top diplomat, given both have strongly defended Leo against Trump’s attacks and have criticized the Iran war as illegal — drawing the president's ire.

Rubio insisted this week that the visit had been in the works for a while but that “obviously we had some stuff that happened.”

Rubio looks to smooth ties as Trump lashes out at the pope

The tensions began when Trump lashed out at Leo on social media last month, saying the pope was soft on crime and terrorism for comments about the administration’s immigration policies and deportations as well as the Iran war. Leo then said God doesn’t listen to the prayers of those who wage war.

Later, Trump posted a social media image appearing to liken himself to Jesus Christ, which was deleted after backlash. He has refused to apologize to Leo and has sought to explain away the post by saying he thought the image was of him as a doctor.

Rubio said Trump’s recent criticisms of Leo were rooted in his opposition to Iran potentially obtaining a nuclear weapon, which he said could be used against millions of Catholics and other Christians.

Trump “doesn’t understand why anybody — leave aside the pope — the president and I, for that matter, I think most people, I cannot understand why anyone would think that it’s a good idea for Iran to ever have a nuclear weapon,” Rubio told reporters Tuesday at the White House.

Leo has never said Iran should obtain nuclear weapons and that the Catholic Church “for years has spoken out against all nuclear weapons, so there is no doubt there.”

“The mission of the church is to preach the Gospel, to preach peace. If someone wants to criticize me for announcing the Gospel, let him do it with the truth,” Leo said late Tuesday, after Trump again accused him of being “OK” with Iran having a nuclear weapon.

Leo noted that the Catholic Church has always permitted countries to act in self-defense and acknowledged the church's “just war” tradition.

But with the advance of the age of nuclear weapons, “the whole concept of war has to be reevaluated in terms today," he said. “And I always believe that it’s much better to enter into dialogue than to look for arms.”

Rubio has often been called on to tone down or explain Trump’s harsh rhetoric. Trump also has criticized Meloni and other NATO allies for a lack of support for the Iran war, recently announcing plans to pull thousands of troops out of Germany in the coming months.

Vatican seen as willing to have dialogue

Giampiero Gramaglia, former head of the ANSA news agency and its onetime Washington correspondent, said he didn’t expect much to come out of Rubio's visit for Italian or Vatican relations. He, and other Italian commentators, believe Rubio instead was looking to smooth over relations with the pope for his own political ambitions as well as the upcoming midterm congressional elections and 2028 presidential race.

“I doubt Rubio has the role of conciliator for Trump,” he told Italy's Foreign Press Association. “I have the perception that Rubio’s mission is more about himself” and his political ambitions as a prominent Catholic Republican.

The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary in the Vatican’s culture office, said Rubio’s mission wasn’t to “convert” the pope to Trump’s side. Rather, Washington “has come to acknowledge — implicitly but legibly — that (Leo’s) voice carries weight in the world that cannot simply be dismissed.”

“The situation created by President Trump’s remarks required a high-level, direct intervention, conducted in the proper language of diplomacy: a semantic corrective to a narrative of frontal conflict with the church,” he wrote in an essay this week.

Journalist Massimo Franco, writing in the Corriere della Sera newspaper, said the Vatican's decision to not cancel the pope’s audience with Rubio after Trump’s latest broadside was evidence of its willingness to keep open dialogue.

But relations with the Meloni government, which is facing widespread Italian public opposition to the Iran war, are not so easily smoothed over. “Keeping the alliance with the United States firm while criticizing the president is showing itself to be increasingly difficult,” Franco wrote Wednesday.

Farian Sabahi, a professor of contemporary history at the University of Insubria who is of Iranian descent, said Meloni would be wise to more strongly condemn the war for the sake of putting Italy in a good position to rebuild Iran later. Italy is the No. 2 European Union trading partner with Iran, after Germany, working within EU sanctions.

“From a purely opportunistic standpoint, it would actually be advisable to condemn the Israeli-U.S. aggression precisely to give Italian companies the opportunity to do business, given that there are many other players on the international stage ready to enter the Iranian market,” she said.

Cuba is also on the agenda

Rubio said topics other than the Iran war were on the agenda for the Vatican visit, including Cuba. The Holy See is particularly concerned about the Trump administration’s threats of potential military action there following its January ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump has said frequently that Cuba could be “next” and even suggested that once the war with Iran is over, naval assets deployed in the Middle East could return to the United States by way of Cuba.

Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime Cuba hawk.

“We gave Cuba $6 million of humanitarian aid, but obviously they won’t let us distribute it," Rubio said. “We distributed it through the church. We’d like to do more.”

Lee reported from Washington.

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