WASHINGTON
\nUS Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Rome and the Vatican this week, an Italian government source said on Sunday, just weeks after a clash between Donald Trump and Pope Leo. Rubio, who is a Catholic, is expected to meet Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, the source told AFP.
\nItalian media reported that he would also meet Defence Minister Guido Crosetto during the Thursday-Friday visit. The meetings come several weeks after US President Trump\u2019s extraordinary criticism of Pope Leo XIV over the Catholic leader\u2019s anti-war rhetoric.
\nTrump also dismissed Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni \u2014 one of his closest European allies \u2014 as lacking courage after she defended the US pontiff. Italian media on Sunday presented Rubio\u2019s visit as a meeting to \u201cthaw\u201d relations.
\nSince taking over as leader of the world\u2019s 1.4 billion Catholics on May 8, 2025, following the death of Pope Francis, Leo has criticised the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown on immigrationBut it was his increasing anti-war rhetoric, particularly following the US-Israeli attack on Iran, that triggered Trump\u2019s ire.
\nLeo, on April 7, declared Trump\u2019s threat to destroy Iran \u201cunacceptable\u201d and urged Americans to demand that US lawmakers \u201cwork for peace\u201d. The US president subsequently slammed the pontiff in a social media post as \u201cWEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy\u201d.
\nTrump also said he was \u201cnot a big fan of Pope Leo\u201d and that he does not \u201cwant a pope who thinks it\u2019s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon\u201d. Meloni condemned as \u201cunacceptable\u201d Trump\u2019s criticism \u2014 prompting the president to turn his fire on her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Rome and the Vatican this week, an Italian government source said on Sunday, just weeks after a clash between Donald Trump and Pope Leo. Rubio, who is a Catholic, is expected to meet Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":97202,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97237,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97226\/revisions\/97237"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}