Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday dismissed the possibility that his upcoming trip to the Vatican is focused on smoothing over relations between the Trump administration and Pope Leo XIV.
The State Department announced Monday that Rubio would be meeting with the pope and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during his visit to Italy later this week. Rubio, a Catholic, is set to meet with the Pope at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Thursday morning.
While Italian media was quick to characterize his visit as a “relations thawing mission,” Rubio said Tuesday the trip is business as normal.
“The trip is really not tied to anything other than the fact that it would be normal for us to engage, and other secretaries of State have done that in the past,” Rubio said at a press conference.
He pointed to the distribution of humanitarian aid in Cuba and addressing “the challenges that are being faced by Christians in Africa” as two areas on which the Trump administration engages with the Vatican.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has escalated his attacks on the pope in recent weeks, calling him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” in a social media tirade last month.
“Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!”
Leo responded at the time by saying it was “not in [his] interest at all” to debate Trump on the conflict in the Middle East and that he would continue to speak out against war.
Trump once again chided Leo during a Monday radio interview, telling conservative host Hugh Hewitt that “he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people” with his rhetoric on Iran. The pope has been vocal in his criticism of the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran, calling his threats to destroy a “whole civilization” in the country “truly unacceptable.”
Asked about the president’s latest comments, Rubio — filling in Tuesday for press secretary Karoline Leavitt while she’s on maternity leave — told reporters at a White House press briefing that Trump’s intention was to underscore his belief in the importance of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
“I think the president’s point is, how anyone cannot see that as an unacceptable outcome and an unacceptable risk is beyond him. It’s puzzling, and someone has to do something about it,” he said.