Editor’s note: This article has been updated. Multiple statements from Trump administration officials are disputing the report discussed below. The Pentagon released a statement calling it “highly exaggerated and distorted,” and the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican said Cardinal Pierre confirmed with him that negative characterizations of the meeting were “fabrications.”

(LifeSiteNews) — The Vatican and the United States administration are at odds following a January Pentagon meeting and escalating papal criticism of conflicts in the Middle East, according to a report.

On April 6, The Free Press published a report according to which, in January 2026, there was a private meeting between Cardinal Christophe Pierre, then Apostolic Nuncio of the Holy See to the United States, and Elbridge Colby, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of War. The meeting was reportedly very tense and rough, during which Colby urged Pope Leo to “align himself more clearly with the United States” and remarked that the U.S. can “do whatever it wants.”

“The United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side,” Colby said during the meeting, according to officials cited by The Free Press.

According to multiple sources cited anonymously in the report, the January meeting marked a turning point in U.S.-Vatican relations. Roman officials characterized the encounter as confrontational, describing it as a “bitter lecture” delivered to the cardinal at the Pentagon. The same sources indicated that the remarks were perceived within the Vatican as an “explicit warning” tied to American military power.

The Pentagon disputed the report’s characterization of the meeting, calling the discussion “cordial” and the reporting on it “highly exaggerated and distorted.” Furthermore, the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican said Cardinal Pierre confirmed with him that negative characterizations of the meeting were “fabrications.”

The meeting reportedly occurred days after Pope Leo XIV delivered a speech on January 9, 2026, in which he criticized the growing reliance on force in international relations. “In our time, the weakness of multilateralism is a particular cause for concern at the international level. A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies,” the Pope said.

“War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading. The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined. Peace is no longer sought as a gift and a desirable good in itself…. Peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one’s own dominion.”

According to The Free Press report, various senior U.S. defense officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, interpreted these remarks as directed at U.S. foreign policy.

Further details from the meeting suggest that at least one U.S. official invoked the historical precedent of the Avignon Papacy, a 14th-century period during which the papacy was effectively subordinated to the French crown. The reference included mention of the assault on Pope Boniface VIII and the subsequent relocation of the papal seat from Rome to Avignon, France.

According to political consultant Christopher Hale, “many in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.” The Pentagon’s warning so alarmed the Vatican that Pope Leo called off his planned visit to the United States later this year.

In fact, on February 8, 2026, the director of the Vatican Press Office, Matteo Bruni, officially stated that “Pope Leo XIV will not be traveling to the United States this year,” dismissing rumors of a possible visit for the 250th anniversary of American independence.

Instead, the Pope scheduled a visit to Lampedusa on July 4, an island in the Mediterranean associated with migrant arrivals from northern Africa. Hale noted that the choice of date and location was unlikely to be accidental, given the symbolic contrast.

READ: Pope Leo will not be present to receive freedom award in US this summer

The Pope intensified his condemnations during Holy Week. In remarks culminating on Easter Sunday, he called on world leaders to abandon armed conflict and reject what he described as the “desire to dominate others.” Earlier in the week, he had condemned what he termed the “imperialist occupation of the world” and warned that “God does not accept the prayers of those who wage war.”

It is indeed difficult not to interpret Leo’s comments as an immediate judgment on Donald Trump’s second administration, which had bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, kidnapped Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, pressed aggressively for the dissolution of NATO, and threatened several U.S. allies – even suggesting that the United States could seize control of Canada and Greenland.

In the months that followed, the administration also authorized a naval blockade of Cuba, imposed unilateral sanctions on multiple EU member states, and publicly floated the possibility of withdrawing security guarantees from South Korea and Japan unless they “rebalanced” their strategic alignment toward Washington.