#USA #DC – A bombshell report from The Free Press which has been independently confirmed through Letters from Leo has detailed a closed-door meeting at the Pentagon where senior Trump administration officials, including Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, confronted the Vatican’s then-U.S. ambassador, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, about U.S. military power. The U.S. officials told the ambassador that the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world, and that the Catholic Church better take its side. As tempers rose in the meeting, a U.S. official attempted to invoke the “Avignon Papacy” as a veiled threat to have the Vatican submit to American foreign policy. The Avignon Papacy was a historical event in which the French Crown used its military to coerce the Papacy from Rome to Avignon for the duration of seven popes in an attempt to better align the papacy with France’s own domestic and foreign policy objectives.
The meeting occurred as a result of a State-of-the-World speech Pope Leo XIV made in January 2026. The pope criticized a shift from dialogue-based diplomacy to one reliant on force, and expressed opposition to war and imperialism. U.S. officials interpreted this speech as a direct attack on the Trump administration’s policy, including the “Donroe Doctrine” (Trump’s asserted U.S. dominance in the western hemisphere). Since the United States had kidnapped the President of Venezuela at the start of the year, critics outside of the Vatican have observed this sort of shift in American diplomacy, which has escalated amid the Iran War as the United States has attempted to coerce foreign powers such as Iran to its will through gunboat diplomacy.
During the meeting, Colby and colleagues had summoned Cardinal Pierre. They dissected the pope’s speech line-by-line, asserted that “American has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world,” and told the Vatican State that it “had better take its side.” One official then referenced the Avignon Papacy, alluding to the historical military coercion of the papacy. According to the report, the cardinal did not respond to the threats and listened in silence.
As a result of this meeting, the report alleges that the Vatican, and by extension Pope Leo, decided to decline the invitation to visit the United States for the nation’s 250th anniversary. In the weeks afterwards, especially at the start of the Iran War, the pope continued his anti-war stance numerous times, labelling the warmongers in the Pentagon as having hands “full of blood.” Recently, the pope went as far as to urge Americans to contact their elected representatives as Trump made threats to commit war crimes in Iran if they did not submit to his demands. Despite the threats to the Vatican State in January, the Vatican has remained committed to its foreign policy objectives rather than cave to the United States and their policies. Additionally, Pope Leo XIV and the Vatican have remained opposed to the Trump administration’s domestic policy as it relates to illegal immigrants and mass deportation, which has been another point of division between the United States and the Vatican. The report’s events may have contributed and supported recent increased division between evangelical and Catholic Christians since the start of the Iran War. In the last week, the Pentagon was criticized for not providing a Good Friday service for Catholics, choosing to only host one for protestants and barring Catholics from attending. The Pentagon responded to this event and stated that there was simply no Catholic priest available to assist with a Good Friday service, which received mixed responses.
The report frames the pope’s objection to U.S. demands as a refusal to become a partisan trophy, especially with upcoming midterm elections. In face of military threat, the pope has remained committed to his ministry and papal mission rather than to submit to the demands of a country that continues to disturb global peace, especially as the Iran War continues with ceasefire violations from Israel who continues to invade Lebanon, and reportedly continues to bomb Iran.
Image: Pope Leo XIV during his State-of-the-World speech on January 9, 2026.
