VATICAN CITY - A senior Vatican figure on Wednesday described U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated public attacks on Pope Leo as "a bit strange, to say the least," comments that arrived one day before the pope was scheduled to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Speaking to reporters outside an event near the Vatican, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said he preferred not to render personal judgments about the matter. "I wouldn’t want to get into judgments or personal evaluations about this," he said, noting only that the tone of the attacks struck him as odd.
The pope has become a vocal critic of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and has opposed the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies, positions that have drawn the president’s ire and a series of unusually public rebukes in recent weeks. Those presidential remarks have prompted pushback from Christian leaders across the political spectrum.
Parolin said the upcoming meeting at the Vatican had been requested by the U.S. and that Pope Leo would listen closely to what Secretary of State Rubio had to say. The U.S. ambassador to the Holy See told journalists on Tuesday that the encounter would likely be "frank." Parolin added, "I imagine they’ll talk about everything that has happened in recent days."
The planned encounter marks the first known meeting between the pope and a member of President Trump’s cabinet in nearly a year. Vatican officials did not offer a detailed public agenda for the discussion, but comments from both sides indicated an expectation that recent tensions would be addressed.
Trump’s criticism has included an assertion earlier in the week that the pope believed it was acceptable for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, a claim the president made while also saying Leo was "endangering a lot of Catholics" by opposing the war. After the president’s latest public attack, the pope responded to journalists by saying he was communicating the Christian message of peace.
Pope Leo also rejected the notion that he supported nuclear armament. The pope reaffirmed the church’s teaching that nuclear weapons are immoral, a position Vatican officials reiterated following the controversy.
Cardinal Parolin’s comments underscore the diplomatic sensitivity of the moment as Vatican leaders prepare to receive a high-level U.S. official amid heightened rhetoric between the two men. The meeting’s outcome and whether it will ease public tensions remain to be seen.