Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre to a closed-door Pentagon meeting in January, days after Pope Leo XIV denounced a world returning to force and war. The Pentagon warning landed hard enough that the Vatican later canceled Leo’s planned U.S. visit for later in the year.
According to The Free Press, Colby told the cardinal that the United States had the military power to do whatever it wanted in the world and that the Catholic Church had better take its side. One U.S. official at the meeting also invoked the Avignon papacy, the 14th-century period when the French monarchy bent the church into submission and forced the papacy out of Rome and into Avignon.
The dispute matters now because it points to a public rupture between Washington and the Holy See that has only widened since January. Leo’s Jan. 9 speech had already infuriated Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Pentagon officials after he said that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force” and warned that “war is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.”
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The Vatican read the Pentagon’s Avignon reference as a threat to use military force against the Holy See, while the White House said The Free Press’s account was “highly exaggerated and distorted.” A Defense Department official, by contrast, said the meeting between Pentagon and Vatican officials was respectful and reasonable, adding, “We have nothing but the highest regard and welcome continued dialogue with the Holy See.”
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That split has now spilled into the calendar. In February, the Holy See rejected the White House’s invitation to host Leo for America’s 250th anniversary in July, and the pope instead arranged to visit Lampedusa on July 4, a tiny island between Tunisia and Sicily where North African immigrants wash ashore by the thousands. The unanswered question is whether the freeze between the Trump administration and the Catholic Church can be repaired before it hardens into something more lasting.
