Pentagon Officials Warn Pope After He Criticized US Military Policy

Relations between the United States and the Catholic Church have chilled since January. Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre after Pope Leo XIV’s State of the World address. According to a new report in The Free Press, Colby warned that the US has the military power to act as it wishes and urged the Church to back its position. The meeting even referenced the fourteenth-century Avignon papacy as a warning of what military force could do. Alarmed by the threat, the Vatican canceled the pope’s planned US visit, opting instead for a solidarity trip to Lampedusa on July 4. The White House has since dismissed the report as exaggerated and distorted.

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