Marco Rubio meets with Pope Leo at Vatican to discuss Middle East, international situation

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met privately with Pope Leo XIV and other Vatican officials May 7 to discuss the Middle East, the Western Hemisphere, and the need to promote peace and human dignity, according to statements from the Vatican and U.S. officials.

Met with @Pontifex to underscore our shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity.

pic.twitter.com/BIZ9SfW5nY— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) May 7, 2026

In a statement released after the meeting, the Vatican said the “cordial discussions” first took place between Rubio and Pope Leo before later talks involving Rubio, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, secretary for relations with states and international organizations.

The discussions reaffirmed the “shared commitment to fostering good bilateral relations between the Holy See and the United States of America,” according to a translation of the Vatican statement.

“There was also an exchange of views regarding the regional and international situation,” the statement added, “with particular attention given to countries marked by war, political tensions, and difficult humanitarian situations, as well as to the need to work tirelessly in support of peace.”

State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said Rubio and the Pope discussed the “situation” in the Middle East and topics “of mutual interest” in the Western Hemisphere. The meeting “underscored the strong relationship between the United States and the Holy See and their shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity,” he said. Rubio later met with Cardinal Parolin to discuss “mutual cooperation and pressing international issues,” according to Pigott.

U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Brian Burch, who attended the roughly two-and-a-half-hour meeting at the Apostolic Palace between Secretary Rubio and Cardinal Parolin, issued a similar statement on social media, highlighting the “strong relationship” between Washington and the Vatican.

U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Brian Burch welcomes Secretary of State Marco Rubio upon his arrival at the Rome's Ciampino airport on May 7, 2026. (Photo by Andrew Medichini / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)

The encounter with the Pope was held shortly before 11:30 a.m. local time and marked the first meeting between the head of the Church and a Trump cabinet official in nearly a year. Rubio previously met Pope Leo in May 2025 following a Mass marking the start of the Pontiff’s papacy.

The visit also comes after President Donald Trump’s criticism of the Holy Father over the Iran war; to which the Pontiff responded May 5 by reaffirming the Church’s longstanding opposition to all nuclear weapons, as Zeale News previously reported.

>> Pope points to Church opposition to nukes after Trump falsely claimed he said 'Iran can have a nuclear weapon’ <<

Rubio, however, downplayed suggestions that the Rome trip was intended to ease tensions between the administration and the Vatican.

“No, I mean it’s a trip we had planned from before, and obviously we had some stuff that happened,” Rubio told reporters May 5 when asked whether the visit was meant to “smooth things over.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the timing of his upcoming visit to the Vatican is not tied to a rift between President Trump and Pope Leo, and that it was ‘planned from before’ https://t.co/OPkIGlTP8R pic.twitter.com/utTLowSIG3— Reuters (@Reuters) May 5, 2026

He added there was “a lot to talk about with the Vatican,” including the Pope’s recent trip to Africa and their shared concerns about religious freedom worldwide.

Kelsey Reinhardt, president and CEO of CatholicVote, pointed out that “much has been made of the Pope vs. President narrative, but in the face of today’s meetings and the shared interests of the two, despite the fact that they disagree on the best way to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, that narrative is increasingly seen as one driven by online agitators and others who seem content to sow division rather than examine the picture as a whole in the appropriate context.”

“This is a relationship between two sovereign nations that goes back decades,” Reinhardt said, “and it’s not going to be altered by short-term disagreements over how to bring about peace in the world, which is one of the top shared goals of both.”

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