Letters from Leo can now independently confirm The Free Press report that the meeting took place — and that some Vatican officials were so alarmed by the Pentagon’s tactics that they shelved plans for Pope Leo XIV to visit the United States later this year.
Other officials in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.]
In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture.
“America,” Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”
[...]
There is no public record of any Vatican official ever taking a meeting at the Pentagon, and certainly none of a senior U.S. official threatening the Vicar of Christ on Earth with the prospect of an American Babylonian Captivity.
The reporting also confirms — with fresh sources and new color — what I first reported in February: that the Vatican declined the Trump-Vance White House’s invitation to host Pope Leo XIV for America’s 250th anniversary in 2026.
[...]
According to a senior Vatican official quoted in the piece, the Holy See initially considered the request, then postponed it indefinitely because of foreign policy disagreements, the rising opposition of American bishops to the Trump-Vance mass deportation regime, and a refusal to become a partisan trophy in the 2026 midterms.
[...]
The cardinal sat through the lecture in silence. The Holy See has not, since that day, given an inch.
The Letters from Leo
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