America is having its Golden Age, Iran is about to get blasted into the Stone Age… and Elbridge Colby wants to go back to the Late Middle Ages? According to a Free Press report by Mattia Ferraresi, the Under Secretary of War for Policy summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s then-ambassador to the US, to a meeting in which the Avignon Papacy was invoked. (For those of you who didn’t go to Catholic school: in the 1300s the king of France had Pope Boniface VIII captured and beaten after the pope excommunicated him; a few years later the papacy moved to Avignon amid continued threats from the French crown and instability in Rome.)
During this meeting, Pentagon officials allegedly picked apart Pope Leo XIV’s “state of the world” address. This was the speech he gave in January, in which he warned that “a zeal for war is spreading” shortly after the capture of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
One Vatican official told the Free Press that the Pentagon was particularly enraged by a part of the Pope’s speech where he said that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies.” This was seen as a challenge to the Donroe Doctrine.
The Pope is not a fan of war (shocking, I know). While he never mentions President Trump by name in any of his critiques, he has spoken out against the “inhuman treatment” of illegal immigrants in the US and called threats to wipe out Iran’s civilization “truly unacceptable.”
Leo declined the White House’s invitation to America’s 250th birthday celebrations and is keeping some distance from his country of birth. Some might interpret this as the Pope resisting being drawn in to US politics, in line with his refusal to name-drop Trump; Ferraresi insinuates Leo could be worried about getting Boniface’d.
America’s relationship with the Chicago-born pontiff is further strained by the fact that quite a few members of the administration are Catholics, which complicates the Vatican’s ability to treat them simply as government officials. The most prominent ones are J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, Trump’s would-be successors. That Rubio is an outspoken Catholic doesn’t, however, mean he wants to turn the Donroe Doctrine into Church doctrine. However, Vatican officials described the Pentagon meeting to the Free Press as a “bitter lecture warning that the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants – and that the Church had better take its side.”
Military power to bomb the hell out of Iran – or military power to seize the Vatican? And is someone in the Pentagon earnestly bringing up Avignon, or is that meant to be some kind of unfunny tradcath-bro joke? It’s not really clear from the report. It’s also worth reiterating that Colby is also Catholic, and far from a warmongering zealot.
So far, there are limited details of what actually went down between Vatican and Pentagon officials in January. The Pentagon responded to the Free Press article, saying it was a “highly exaggerated and distorted” characterization of the meeting.
Nonetheless, Christopher Hale, who writes the popular “Letters from Leo” Substack, called the meeting “pure mob” and said it reminded him of how MAGA bullied James Comey. (It also reminded him of when the “cabal” connected to Epstein, Bannon and the “far-right media machine” plotted to take down Pope Francis.) Hale claims the Pentagon was actually threatening the Vatican with the prospect of another Avignon papacy. Leo’s criticism of the Donroe Doctrine was, according to Hale, “powerful enough to make warlords drag a cardinal into a Pentagon conference room and raise the ghost of a murdered pope.”
You may have also seen a story last week about the Pentagon only holding a Protestant Service on Good Friday and no Catholic Mass. Hale covered this in a post called “Trump-Vance White House Escalates Holy Week Assault Against Catholic Church.” Was Hegseth’s Protestant Pentagon punishing Catholics for loving migrants? It turned out that the Catholic chaplain was out of town. Catholics don’t celebrate Mass on Good Friday, either.
If the Pentagon did indeed threaten the Vatican with Avignon 2.0 in an attempt to silence Leo’s criticism, that is worrying. It’s not, however, evident that this is what happened. A “bitter lecture” given to a diplomat is unprecedented in this case (there’s no public evidence of a Vatican official ever taking a meeting at the Pentagon) but it’s not the same as a threat of force, or a schism.
Brian Burch, the US ambassador to the Vatican, spoke to Cardinal Pierre today regarding the January meeting, according to the US Embassy to the Holy See. Pierre “emphatically denied the media’s portrayal of his meeting with Colby,” the Embassy wrote on X. The Cardinal said it was a “frank, but very cordial” and “normal encounter” and that the reporting “does not reflect what happened” and was “just invented to make a story.”
It strikes me as opportunistic for Hale, who is a career Democrat, to sensationalize the report. There are many American Catholics who have become disillusioned with Donald Trump over his foreign and domestic policies. But exploiting Catholic sensibilities for political ends makes it difficult to discern what’s true and what is, to borrow a phrase from Hale, a “media machine plot.”
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