VATICAN CITY: The US State Department underlined its \u201cstrong relationship\u201d with the Vatican on Thursday after talks between top diplomat Marco Rubio and Pope Leo, weeks after Donald Trump\u2019s astonishing attack on the first US pontiff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe conversations today were friendly and constructive,\u201d a State Department official told AFP following the US secretary of state\u2019s private audience at the Vatican.<\/p>\n
Rubio\u2019s visit comes after US President Trump accused Leo, the head of the world\u2019s 1.4 billion Catholics, of being \u201cweak on crime and terrible for foreign policy\u201d after he made critical comments about the Middle East war.<\/p>\n
After the talks, US State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said Leo and Rubio discussed the Middle East as well as their mutual interests in the Western Hemisphere \u2014 a phrase used by the US to refer to Latin America.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe meeting underscored the strong relationship between the United States and the Holy See and their shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A US official confirmed that the Catholic Church\u2019s work in Cuba was discussed.<\/p>\n
The Holy See has long played an active role in Cuban diplomacy, while Rubio \u2014 a Cuban-American \u2014 has led the US administration\u2019s efforts to bring major change to the communist-run country.<\/p>\n
Rubio also met with Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, with whom he discussed subjects including religious freedom, according to Pigott.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VATICAN CITY: The US State Department underlined its \u201cstrong relationship\u201d with the Vatican on Thursday after talks between top diplomat Marco Rubio and Pope Leo, weeks after Donald Trump\u2019s astonishing attack on the first US pontiff. \u201cThe conversations today were friendly and constructive,\u201d a State Department official told AFP following the US secretary of state\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":97394,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97383","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\/97383","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=97383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97398,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97383\/revisions\/97398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}