US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Rome and the Vatican this week, an Italian government source said on Sunday, just weeks after a clash between Donald Trump and Pope Leo.
Rubio, who is Catholic, is expected to meet with Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, the source told AFP.
Italian media reported that he would also meet Defense Minister Guido Crosetto during the Thursday-Friday visit.
The meetings come weeks after US President Trump’s extraordinary criticism of Pope Leo XIV over the Catholic leader’s anti-war rhetoric.
Trump also dismissed Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – one of his closest European allies – as lacking courage after she defended the US Pope.
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Italian media on Sunday described Rubio’s visit as a meeting to “melt” relations.
Since assuming leadership of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics on May 8, 2025, following the death of Pope Francis, Leo has criticized the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
But it was his escalating anti-war rhetoric, especially after the US-Israeli attack on Iran, that drew Trump’s ire.
Leo on April 7 declared Trump’s threat to destroy Iran “unacceptable” and called on Americans to demand that US lawmakers “work for peace.”
The US president then slammed the Pope in a social media post as “weak on crime and terrible on foreign policy”.
Trump also said he was “not a big fan of Pope Leo” and that he “doesn’t want a pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
Meloni slammed Trump’s criticism as “unacceptable” — prompting the president to fire back at her.
“I’m shocked at him. I thought he had courage, but I was wrong,” the US president said in an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
He also accused Meloni — a far-right leader who has sought to act as a bridge between the divergent views of the US and Europe — for failing to help the United States with NATO.
Trump has threatened to withdraw American troops from Italy, saying that Rome “didn’t help us” in the Iran war.
He has made a similar threat to Spain, while the Pentagon has announced that it is withdrawing 5,000 American troops from Germany.
