The Trump Administration Threatened the Pope Over His Criticism of Trump

For the first time in the history of the Catholic Church, an American is currently serving as pope. In spite of that, Pope Leo XIV does not appear to feel any need to embrace his home country no matter what policies they might be enacting.

Over the course of Trump's second term in office, the Pope has often been a vocal critic of his policies, and now, someone from the Trump administration has gone so far as to threaten the Pope. Here's what we know about those threats.

According to reporting in The Free Press, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to the Pentagon and proceeded to give him a lecture about the immense power of the United States.

“The United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side," Colby reportedly said.

Another U.S. official present at the meeting reportedly brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the history of the Catholic Church where the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and eventually his death, and then forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon.

The not-so-subtle suggestion appears to be that the United States could do something similar if the church steps out of line.

This comes after the Trump administration has made it clear how rankled they are by the pope's comments about their military endeavors. In a speech on Jan. 9, the pope made comments that seemed to point at Trump directly, saying “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,” and that “war is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.”

Although the pope and the president have not always historically agreed, this is the first time in the history of the United States that a Catholic official has been berated and apparently threatened by a government official. According to Letters from Leo, a Substack about the Vatican, the comments were alarming enough that the pope canceled a planned visit to the United States scheduled for later in the year.

"Many in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See,” he reported. The administration, meanwhile, has suggested that there was nothing strange about the meeting at all.

“The meeting between Pentagon and Vatican officials was a respectful and reasonable discussion,” a Defense Department official said. “We have nothing but the highest regard and welcome continued dialogue with the Holy See.”

If it's true that the administration did threaten the pope, that doesn't necessarily mean they would actually commit violence against the church, but it's a remarkable breach nonetheless.