Rubio set to meet Pope Leo at Vatican amid immigration, Iran tensions

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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to Italy this week for a meeting Thursday with Pope Leo at Vatican City, the first known in-person encounter between the pontiff and a U.S. cabinet official in nearly a year, Italian newspapers La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera reported.

What Happened

The meeting signals a diplomatic push to ease tensions between Washington and the Vatican over the Trump administration's hard-line immigration policies and the U.S.-Israeli led war with Iran — a clash that has reverberated through immigrant and Catholic communities across the United States.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to Italy this week for a meeting Thursday with Pope Leo at Vatican City, the first known in-person encounter between the pontiff and a U.S. cabinet official in nearly a year, Italian newspapers La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera reported.

The meeting signals a diplomatic push to ease tensions between Washington and the Vatican over the Trump administration's hard-line immigration policies and the U.S.-Israeli led war with Iran — a clash that has reverberated through immigrant and Catholic communities across the United States.

Pope Leo has emerged as a persistent critic of the Trump administration's anti-immigration stance and has spoken out against the U.S.-Israeli led war with Iran. The friction escalated in April 2026 when President Donald Trump attacked the pope on social media multiple times, calling him "terrible" while Leo was on a four-nation Africa tour, according to The Korea Times.

Beyond the papal audience, Rubio is scheduled to meet with Italy's foreign and defense ministers as well as Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's lead diplomatic official, La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera reported. The visit is also intended to repair ties strained by Trump's recent public criticism of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

The trip comes as the Pentagon announced a drawdown of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany. Italy remains a significant hub for American military operations in Europe, with roughly 13,000 active-duty soldiers stationed across six U.S. bases there as of the end of 2025, The Korea Times reported.

Rubio and Leo have met before: in May 2025, Rubio appeared alongside Vice President JD Vance at the pontiff's inaugural Mass. Thursday's planned session would mark the first known cabinet-level meeting with Leo in the roughly 12 months since that ceremony.

Thursday's meeting with Rubio will come one day before Leo marks his first anniversary as pontiff on May 9 — a year shaped in large part by his public disputes with the Trump administration over immigration and war.

This article was written by OC LifeHub staff with AI assistance, based on reporting by The Korea Times, and fact-checked against the source.