Vatican's careful words on pope-Rubio meeting imply deep tensions with Trump, say analysts

A Vatican statement after Pope Leo’s meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which said the two had pledged to improve bilateral relations, was a recognition of unprecedented tensions, insiders and analysts said. Rubio’s meeting on Thursday with Pope Leo, the first US pope, garnered wide public attention as President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the pontiff over the US-Israeli war on Iran. The Vatican statement after the 45-minute encounter, the first between the pope and a Trump cabinet official in nearly a year, said the two leaders had “renewed the shared commitment to fostering good bilateral relations”. “[The] statement makes it clear that, at present, there is work to do,” Peter Martin, a former diplomat at the US embassy to the Holy See who served during Democratic and Republican administrations, told Reuters. Break with tradition of saying all is well Austen Ivereigh, a Vatican specialist who co-wrote a book with the late Pope Francis, said the statement’s focus on the need to build bilateral relations suggests “that they are at the moment not good”. The US embassy to the Holy See said on X after the meeting that Pope Leo and Rubio had discussed “topics of mutual interest in the Western Hemisphere”. “The United States and Holy See partnership in advancing religious freedom is strong,” Rubio said on X, referencing his later meetings at the Vatican on Thursday with senior Vatican officials. The Vatican statement covered both the pope-Rubio encounter and the secretary’s subsequent Vatican meetings, but mentioned neither the Western Hemisphere nor religious freedom. It said there had been an “exchange of views” on the world situation, but gave no areas of common agreement other than toward building better bilateral relations. Kenneth Hackett, who led the US Catholic Church’s foreign relief agency for 18 years before serving as ambassador to the Holy See under former president Barack Obama, said the Vatican statement indicated that “there were no