Vatican says report Pentagon officials lectured its ambassador about Pope Leo ‘completely untrue’

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The Holy See Press Office issued a statement April 10 disputing a report by The Free Press several days earlier that the Vatican’s top diplomat in the U.S. was brought to the Pentagon in January for a “bitter lecture” about comments from Pope Leo XIV that some senior U.S. defense officials perceived as criticism of the Trump administration.

“The narrative offered by some media outlets about this meeting is completely untrue,” the Vatican press office statement said.

It said that Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the former papal ambassador to the U.S., “confirmed” that his Jan. 22 meeting with Eldridge Colby, U.S. undersecretary of war for policy, at the Pentagon “was part of the Papal Representative’s regular mission and provided the opportunity for an exchange of views on matters of mutual interest.”

A day earlier, both the U.S. War Department, a moniker for the Department of Defense, and Vatican Embassy in Washington issued written statements to OSV News disputing The Free Press’s characterization of the meeting between Colby and Cardinal Pierre, who retired from the post in March after turning 80.

According to the April 6 report by The Free Press, “Vatican officials briefed on the meeting, who spoke with The Free Press on the condition of anonymity, described it as a bitter lecture warning that the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants — and that the Church had better take its side.”

The official at the Department of Defense told OSV News that the report’s “characterization of the meeting is highly exaggerated and distorted.”

“The meeting between Pentagon and Vatican officials was a respectful and reasonable discussion,” the official’s statement said. “We have nothing but the highest regard and welcome continued dialogue with the Holy See.”

The Vatican Embassy did not shed light on the tone of the meeting or offer specifics about what was discussed there with U.S. officials, but its statement emphasized such meetings are “a standard practice” and it is “grateful for the opportunities to meet and dialogue with government officials and others in Washington to discuss areas of mutual concern.”

The Free Press reported that after Pope Leo’s Jan. 9 speech to members of the diplomatic corps, Colby summoned Cardinal Pierre, the papal nuncio to the U.S. at that time, to the Pentagon. In the speech, the pontiff had condemned zeal for war and raised alarm that “the principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.”

The Free Press, an online outlet that recently became a division of CBS News, described the choice of meeting at the Pentagon as likely unprecedented. Its report claimed Vatican officials said the Pentagon officials were “enraged” about a passage of the speech about what some call the “Donroe Doctrine,” or Trump’s argument for American dominance in the Western Hemisphere, his spin on the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which sought to reduce European influence in the Americas.

“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 pontiff said in his January speech.

According to the report, an unnamed U.S. official even “went so far as to invoke the Avignon Papacy,” a tumultuous period in Church history where popes took up residence in Avignon, France, instead of in Rome, from 1309-1378, due to tremendous military pressure from King Philip IV of France. The king had violently feuded with one of the popes in Rome, leading to Pope Boniface VIII’s untimely death and a new pontiff who agreed to transfer the papacy to Avignon.

In a statement posted on X, the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See said that Brian Burch, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, spoke with Cardinal Pierre on April 9 about the January meeting. It said the former nuncio “emphatically denied the media’s portrayal of his meeting” at the Pentagon.

Burch wrote in his own post that Cardinal Pierre told him the characterizations of the January meeting in The Free Press report were “fabrications” that were “just invented.”

“‘It was a frank and cordial meeting that took place two months ago,'” Burch claimed the cardinal said. Asked about threats of “Avignon,” Burch claimed the cardinal said there were “none.”

Prior to releasing the Vatican’s statement on the meeting, Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, acknowledged the report in comments to reporters in Rome April 9, but declined to comment on its accuracy at that time.

Instead, Bruni pointed out that Pope Leo has “never stopped speaking out” on complex current issues, and referenced the pontiff’s words April 7 leaving Castel Gandolfo, when he condemned Trump’s threat to end Iran’s “whole civilization” as “truly unacceptable.”

“The pope’s words are more recent,” he said.

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