Pentagon denies report of heated meeting with Vatican representative

The Pentagon pushed back late Thursday on a report that suggested a meeting in January between a U.S.-based cardinal and a member of Donald Trump’s administration grew heated.

The Pentagon said on social media that Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defence for policy, had a “respectful and reasonable discussion” with Cardinal Christophe Pierre on Jan. 22, slamming “grossly false and distorted recent reporting.”

“We have nothing but the highest regard and welcome continue dialogue with the Holy See,” the department said on X.

The digital outlet the Free Press reported on Monday that Pierre was “summoned” by the White House over comments made by U.S.-born Pope Leo XIV two weeks earlier. The report characterized parts of the meeting as a “bitter lecture warning that the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants.”

The report cited Vatican officials briefed on the meeting who spoke to the Free Press on condition of anonymity.

U.S. ambassador slams ‘fabrications’

Catholic news agencies, some of which followed up on the Free Press story with their own reports, cast Leo’s Jan. 9 address from the Vatican as a call for multilateralism and compliance with international law.

Leo lamented in that speech that a “zeal for war is spreading. The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.”

While Leo did not refer to specific incidents, the address came five days after a surprise U.S. military operation that led to the seizure of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

The second Trump administration has been accused by some critics of attempting to scrub ignoble events from the historical record, while Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials have been seen as erasing a separation of church and state.

Pierre, originally from France, resigned last month after a decade as the Vatican’s representative to the U.S. While he hasn’t commented on the meeting with White House officials, the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, Brian Burch, said he spoke to Pierre on Thursday.

“He confirmed that recent media characterizations of his meeting with Undersecretary Colby are ‘fabrications’ that were ‘just invented,'” Burch wrote on X.

Pierre, said Burch, described the January meeting in Washington as “frank and cordial.”

Criticism of current war

The U.S. administration, which has close ties to conservative evangelical Protestant leaders, has claimed heavenly endorsement for Trump’s war on Iran.

Hegseth — whose ties to controversial fundamentalist Christian preacher Douglas Wilson have been previously reported — has urged Americans to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

When Trump was asked whether he thought God approved of the war, he answered affirmatively, “because God is good and God wants to see people taken care of.”

Trump’s comments came a week after Leo said in his Palm Sunday message that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

This week, reporters pressed Leo after Trump threatened on social media that “an entire civilization will die,” if Iran did not agree to a ceasefire. Leo said the threat was “truly unacceptable.”

Leo later praised the current ceasefire, saying Wednesday that “only through a return to negotiation can an end to the war be achieved.”

No U.S. trips on horizon

Trump welcomed Leo’s election weeks after the April 2025 death of Pope Francis as a “great honour” for the U.S., but there is no record of the two men having spoken.

Leo was born Robert Prevost in Chicago in 1955, but since the late 1980s, his various roles within the Catholic Church have seen him reside in Rome or Peru.

Trump, in contrast to past presidents such as Joe Biden and George W. Bush, does not regularly attend church services. He said in 2020 that he considers himself a “non-denominational Christian” after being raised Presbyterian.

Trump’s political rise since 2015 has been powered by white Christians, particularly from evangelicals. But white Catholics also favoured him heavily over Hillary Clinton, according to 2016 presidential election exit polls.

In a survey conducted in January, the Pew Research Center found that 46 per cent of respondents who identified as white Catholics said they supported “all or most” of Trump’s plans or policies, down five percentage points from last year. About one-fifth of self-identified Hispanic Catholics answered affirmatively to the same question.

Late last year, Leo supported a rare special message released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that lamented a “climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement” as the Trump administration ramped up deportation efforts.

“If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts, there’s a system of justice,” said Leo.

Leo is not scheduled to visit the U.S. over the first half of this year, and any trip before early November could be viewed through a political lens, given the midterm elections being held then.

Leo will leave on Monday for an African trip whose itinery is said to include 25 speeches over 10 days in Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea. Since being elevated to the papacy, Leo has previously visisted Turkey, Lebanon and Monaco.