US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Rome and the Vatican this week, an Italian government source said Sunday, just weeks after a clash between Donald Trump and Pope Leo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rubio, who is a Catholic, is expected to meet Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, the source told AFP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Italian media reported that he would also meet Defence Minister Guido Crosetto during the Thursday-Friday visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The meetings come several weeks after US President Trump's extraordinary criticism of Pope Leo XIV over the Catholic leader's anti-war rhetoric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump also dismissed Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni -- one of his closest European allies -- as lacking courage after she defended the US pontiff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Italian media on Sunday presented Rubio's visit as a meeting to \"thaw\" relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since taking over as leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics on May 8, 2025, following the death of Pope Francis, Leo has criticised the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it was his increasing anti-war rhetoric, particularly following the US-Israeli attack on Iran, that triggered Trump's ire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leo on April 7 declared Trump's threat to destroy Iran \"unacceptable\" and urged Americans to demand that US lawmakers \"work for peace\".<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US president subsequently slammed the pontiff in a social media post as \"WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy\".<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump also said he was \"not a big fan of Pope Leo\" and that he does not \"want a pope who thinks it's OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meloni condemned as \"unacceptable\" Trump's criticism -- prompting the president to turn his fire on her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"I'm shocked at her. I thought she had courage, but I was wrong,\" the US president said in an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also accused Meloni -- a far-right leader who has sought to act as a bridge between diverging US and European views -- of failing to help the United States with NATO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump has threatened to pull US troops from Italy, saying Rome \"has not been of any help to us\" in the Iran war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He has made a similar threat towards Spain, while the Pentagon has announced it is withdrawing 5,000 US troops from Germany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Rome and the Vatican this week, an Italian government source said Sunday, just weeks after a clash between Donald Trump and Pope Leo. Rubio, who is a Catholic, is expected to meet Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, the source told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":33966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,93],"tags":[49],"class_list":["post-33965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bangladesh","category-nationwide","tag-49"],"yoast_head":"\n