US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will sit down with Pope Leo XIV on Thursday amid a historic period of tension between Washington and the Vatican.

Rubio’s visit follows President Donald Trump’s extraordinary criticisms of the first American pope in the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history, which came after the pontiff expressed his opposition to the US military operation in Iran.

Leo has also continued to speak for the interests of refugees and migrants, in sharp contrast to the Trump administration.

Rubio’s plane touched down in Rome Thursday morning, also the eve of Leo’s first anniversary as pope.

Ahead of his departure, the top US diplomat dismissed the notion that the meeting with Pope Leo is an attempt to re-set diplomatic relations with the Vatican, which the US has relied on as a humanitarian partner for years. He did acknowledge, however, that “there’s a lot to talk about with the Vatican,” including Cuba.

“The trip is really not tied to anything other than the fact that it would be normal for us to engage with them,” Rubio said at a White House press briefing Tuesday.

His trip to Rome and the Vatican comes as Trump has lashed out not only at the pope for his views on the war but also lambasted the US’ longtime European allies – further testing the transatlantic relationship in ways not seen in decades. Rubio will meet on Friday with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni amid ongoing criticism by Trump for what he said was Italy’s lack of support for the US’ war against Iran.

Rubio will meet the pope in the Vatican’s apostolic palace, and he is also expected to sit down with other top Vatican officials including Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s Secretary of State.

It is the second meeting between Rubio, who is a devout Catholic, and the Chicago-born pope, and the first known meeting between a member of the administration and Leo in almost a year. Rubio and Vice President JD Vance met him after his inauguration mass last year.

In a lengthy Truth Social post last month, Trump criticized Leo as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”

“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. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!,” Trump wrote.

Pope Leo responded a day later that he had “no fear” of the Trump administration and would continue speaking for peace but insisted that it was “not in my interest” to debate the US president. One Vatican official, later playing down the tensions, told CNN with a wry smile that “President Trump is too intelligent to be in a battle with a pope from the United States”.

But Trump’s attacks on Leo are not only unprecedented, but ongoing. On Monday, Trump once again took aim at the pope, saying that he was “endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people” with Trump claiming Leo is happy with Iran having a nuclear weapon.

The comments appeared to draw a rebuke from Italy’s foreign minister, who on Tuesday said that the attacks against the pontiff were not acceptable nor helpful to the cause of peace.

Pope says he should be criticized ‘with the truth’

On Tuesday, Leo said that people are free to criticize him, although they should “do so with the truth” and that “the mission of the Church is to preach the Gospel and peace.” On Trump’s claims about nuclear weapons, the pope said the church has for years “spoken out against all nuclear weapons, so there is no doubt on that point.” Rubio on Tuesday downplayed Trump’s latest broadside.

Since his election last May, the first American pope has not had any direct contact – according to the public record – with Trump. The Vatican has made it clear that there will be no papal visit to the United States in 2026, largely due to the November mid-term elections with the pope not visiting countries in the run-up to elections.

Tensions have also been rising following news that, on January 22, the Pentagon held an unusual meeting with the then papal ambassador to the United States. While both the Vatican and Pentagon rejected some of the reporting about what was discussed, one Vatican source described the meeting to CNN as “unprecedented” and that it was “tense”.

Officials say Thursday’s meeting will mark an attempt to move beyond the public back-and forth and return to the behind-the-scenes diplomacy favored by the Holy See. Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican official, sees the pope-Rubio meeting as “cooling the rhetoric” while Brian Burch, the US ambassador to the Holy See, told reporters this week that the secretary of state is coming to have “a frank conversation about US ⁠policy, to engage in dialogue.”

And though the primary purpose of the trip is not political, there is potentially an upside if Rubio can dampen tensions. While many Catholics voted for Trump’s re-election, some experts question the political rationale of attacking the pope with CNN’s chief data analyst, Harry Enten, highlighting Pope Leo’s positive poll ratings. After criticizing the pope, the president also posted – and then deleted – an AI-image of himself as a Christ-like figure, which he later said depicted him as a doctor.

Potential common ground on Cuba

One of the topics also likely to be discussed on Thursday is Cuba. The Trump administration has ratcheted up its economic blockade of the island as it attempts to force Havana into a political deal and the US president has continued to raise the specter of military intervention.

The Vatican, meanwhile, is active diplomatically in Cuba and helped to broker the recent release of prisoners. The Trump administration has worked with the Catholic Church to distribute $6 million in humanitarian aid on the island, Rubio said Tuesday.

“We’re willing to get more humanitarian aid to Cuba, by the way, distributed through the church,” Rubio added.

Francesco Sisci, the director of the Appia Institute, a thinktank that follows Vatican diplomacy, said, “they will talk about Cuba, and it would be strange if they don’t. But the devil is in the detail.” While he said the Vatican would be supportive of a “transition” in Cuba’s political leadership, asking the pope to bless any violent action is very difficult.

Sisci told CNN that the church will “take into account the good will” of Rubio coming to the Vatican but will be “wary of manipulation.” He likened meeting as a modern day “Canossa,” referring to the time when the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, in 1077 made a public apology and submission to Pope Gregory VII.

Rubio on Tuesday also suggested that the two sides would find common ground on concerns about the persecution of Christian minorities in Africa, where Leo recently visited.

“We have a lot to talk about with them, and I engage with them quite a bit on that front,” he said.

Still, the areas of disagreement between the papacy and the Trump administration are significant. Christopher White, a senior fellow at the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University said the war in Iran will be “top of the agenda” for the meeting along with “the treatment of migrants and the marginalized, AI” and USAID cuts.

“After the president’s unprecedented attack on the pope — and the blasphemous use of religious imagery — this is the administration’s attempt to reset relations with the Vatican and likely to help make amends with the many Catholics appalled by such behavior,” said White, who spent time with Leo XIV before his election and is the author of “Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy.” (CNN)

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