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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, 2026In 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...

Pope Leo has criticized Trump over Iran... If it would have been any pope..but this is Pope Leo who has openly criticizing immigration policies of Donald Trump, he has been a defender of policies of Barack Hussein Obama... Fajardo: The Vatican is a theocratic stare... it's not democratic...Pope Leo is head of State...all around him know why he was elected... Marian: As a Catholic... And I’m going to put this to you very clearly. It absolutely sickened me to see Pope Francis travel to Cuba and not advocate for Cuban prisoners, and travel to Nicaragua and not advocate for Nicaraguan...

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a fence-mending visit to the Vatican on Thursday to underscore strong bilateral ties, after U.S. President Donald Trump's broadsides against Pope Leo XIV for his opposition to the Iran war angered the Holy See and sparked ongoing sparring between them. The U.S. State Department said that the meetings with Leo and the Vatican's top diplomat covered peace in the Middle East and "underscored the strong relationship between the United States and the Holy See," and reflected the "enduring partnership" between them.

Two things that non-Catholics and many Catholics don’t understand about the Catholic Church are that it’s not a democratic organization and it’s not an autocracy. In other words, as powerful as the Pope is, he cannot arbitrarily or single-handedly change doctrine and policy. At the same time, even though the church counts 1.4 billion members around the world, it is not structured to take their input into account the way representative government works in America. Among Catholics, this confusion often pops up when the discussion turns to declining mass attendance and increases in the number of lapsed Catholics who no...

On April 26, 1986, a reactor exploded at the Soviet-run Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located some 90 kilometers north of Kyiv in Ukraine, killing 31 people immediately and another 15,000 over the next several years from radiation poisoning. In his appeal, Pope Leo warned about the risk of using increasingly powerful technologies. He expressed his hopes that discernment and responsible decision-making may be carried out regarding nuclear energy. “I hope that at all levels of decision-making, discernment and responsibility may always prevail, so that every use of atomic energy may be at the service of life and peace,” said the...

Donald Trump’s Truth Social post against Pope Leo is unprecedented in the history of the presidency and papacy. No president has ever made such a statement, even as previous popes urged peace during wartime and opposed specific U.S. interventions. Our Aubrey Harris noted examples going back to Pope Benedict XV and World War I. Others are detailing examples from throughout the 20th century. They’ve continued into this century. In recent times, President George W. Bush felt no compulsion to publicly denounce Pope John Paul II when the sainted pontiff opposed the U.S. war in Iraq — a war that Donald...

Pope Leo XIV urged Cameroon’s young people Friday to resist the temptation to migrate and instead work for the common good at home, as he called for morally upright citizens to combat corruption plaguing many African countries. Leo highlighted two of the big problems facing the continent during a Mass and a meeting with students and faculty at the Catholic University of Central Africa: the corruption that keeps countries in poverty and the brain drain of their brightest children who leave rather than fight the corruption at home. They’re themes Leo has highlighted during his visit to Cameroon, a mineral-rich...

Pope Leo XIV has sent 80 electric generators and thousands of medical supplies to Ukraine to help civilians cope with freezing winter temperatures and constant attacks, the Vatican announced on Feb. 9. The aid was arranged in response to appeals from bishops who warned of mounting difficulties caused by Russia’s attacks on energy infrastructure and subzero temperatures across the country. Three trucks carrying the generators and medical supplies departed from the Basilica of Saint Sophia in Rome and have already arrived in Fastiv and Kyiv, areas heavily affected by recent strikes. Alongside the generators, thousands of medical supplies were delivered,...

Under Pope Leo XIV, for the first time, the Vatican set up a dedicated Muslim prayer room at heart of Pope’s 500-year-old library. Suicidal madness. The Vatican should have set up a room, a shrine, to the hundreds of millions of Christians slaughtered by Muslims since its creation 1,400 years ago. ROME HAS FALLEN For the first time ever, the Vatican has built a Muslim prayer room inside its Apostolic Library. While Christians are banned from Mecca, while no church stands in Saudi Arabia, and while Europe’s cathedrals are being turned into mosques, Pope Leo XIV rolls… https://t.co/qnz7jjBhSI pic.twitter.com/qNhu1vjrgb —...

President Donald Trump on April 14 directly addressed Pope Leo XIV in another Truth Social post, drawing attention to the Iranian regime’s reported killing of thousands of protesters in the past two months. “Will someone please tell Pope Leo that Iran has killed at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed, protesters in the last two months, and that for Iran to have a Nuclear Bomb is absolutely unacceptable,” he wrote.Protests in Iran erupted in late December 2025 over economic hardships and quickly turned into broader anti-government demonstrations, Zeale News previously reported. Iranian security forces reportedly responded with live ammunition against the...

VATICAN CITY — President Donald Trump escalated his feud with Pope Leo this morning, nailing a copy of The Art of the Deal to the door of the Vatican. "Here I stand, and can do no other," declared Trump as he drove the nail into the Vatican door. "My conscience is captive to making the best deals. If the haters and losers like Pope Leo can't handle that, too bad. I cannot and will not recant anything about the elements of the deal and why I make the best deals of anyone." A crowd of onlookers stood in stunned silence...

If the morally-confused Pope Leo XIV continues to assume the role of a partisan podcaster, he will very quickly lose his moral authority.And that’s exactly what Leo is doing.We all expect a pope to talk about and pray for peace in times of war, express a desire for unity in times of political divisiveness, and to always appeal to the best in humanity. That’s not what this pope has done. Instead, apparently under the sway of Barry Obama’s hatchet man and former campaign manager, David Axelrod, Leo is recklessly engaging in a left-wing campaign to damage President Trump’s and the...

Iranian Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Masoumeh Ebtekar has tested positive for coronavirus, the state-run daily IRAN reported. Ebtekar is the first member of President Hassan Rouahni’s cabinet to be infected with the novel coronavirus. Earlier today, the chairman of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign affairs committee Mojtaba Zolnour announced in a video that he had also been infected with the disease. Two other Iranian officials – Member of Parliament Mahmoud Sadeghi and Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi – have also previously confirmed that they have been infected with the disease. State media also reported on...

Dear brothers and sisters, Your prayer is an expression of that faith which, according to the words of Jesus, moves mountains (cf. Mt 17:20). Thank you for accepting this invitation to gather here at the tomb of Saint Peter and in so many other places around the world to pray for peace... In the context of the 2003 Iraq war crisis, Saint John Paul II, a tireless advocate for peace, said with deep emotion: “I belong to that generation that lived through World War II and, thanks be to God, survived it. I have the duty to say to all...

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, said on Thursday that the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran does not meet the Catholic Church’s criteria for a just war. “No, it does not seem to meet the conditions,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an academic conference at the Vatican Apostolic Library. When asked by EWTN News about the decision of the United States to attack Iran, Parolin referred to recent remarks by Cardinal Robert McElroy, archbishop of Washington, D.C. In an interview with his archdiocesan newspaper, The Catholic Standard, McElroy said the intervention in Iran failed to meet several...

[Catholic Caucus] Key aide of Pope Francis and Cdl Fernández leaves VaticanFather Daniel Pellizzon has been an overlooked, but important, figure under the last pontificate. Now that era is over.In a notable move, Pope Leo XIV has sent one of Pope Francis’ and Cardinal Fernández’s key aides back to Argentina, raising some speculation about the position of Fernández himself. Father Daniel Pellizzon, of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, is returning to Argentina to become parish priest of the church of San Cayetano de Belgrano near the center of the city of Buenos Aires itself.News of the move, though not announced...

Vatican equates Ramadan and Lent in message to MuslimsThe Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue expressed hope that 'through the shared season of Ramadan and Lent, our inner transformation becomes a catalyst for a renewed world.' The Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue has sent a message to Muslims “on the occasion of the month of Ramadan.” The Islamic season of fasting coincides with Lent this year in what the message calls “a providential convergence of calendars.”Cardinal George Jacob Koovakad, Prefect for the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, expressed his hope that “through the shared season of Ramadan and Lent, our inner transformation becomes a...

Border czar Tom Homan dismissed Pope Leo’s criticism of President Donald Trump’s deportation policies on Wednesday by comparing the fortified walls around the Vatican to the United States’s own border security efforts. During a brief encounter with reporters, Homan was asked about Leo’s comments condemning mass deportations, including that the U.S. is doing them in a “disrespectful” way. Homan said Vatican City itself is a walled state and that the pontiff should focus on the Catholic Church’s “own issues.”

The Vatican has a long memory when it comes to blocking American-led peace initiatives — and a short one when it comes to recognizing Jewish rights in the Land of Israel. When Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, announced Tuesday that Pope Leo would not be joining U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly formed Board of Peace, he framed the decision in procedural language about the United Nations. But for anyone who has watched the Holy See’s decades-long pattern of hostility toward Israeli sovereignty, the refusal carries a familiar echo. Parolin made the announcement on the sidelines of a...

[Catholic Caucus] Abortion, the UN Agenda, and the Vatican: Inside the Transformation of the Pontifical Academy for LifeThe Vatican’s pro-life academy now features a pro-choice economist tied to the UN’s 2030 Agenda. Abortion, climate policy, immigration, and healthcare—now all “pro-life”? This article looks inside the Vatican’s moral reset under Francis and Leo XIV.On February 16, Mariana Mazzucato, an influential economist and ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, delivered an address during the Academy’s plenary meeting in Rome, as part of a two-day event entitled “International Workshop – Healthcare for All. Sustainability and Equity.” The workshop focused on “the...