by Democrat reporter
The Vatican has shelved plans for Pope Leo XIV to visit the United States after what officials describe as a deeply alarming confrontation with the Pentagon.
A stunning new report — now independently confirmed by the publication Letters from Leo — reveals that a top U.S. official summoned the Pope’s then-ambassador, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, and delivered a stark warning: America has the military power to do whatever it wants — and the Church “had better take its side.”
Even more shocking, officials reportedly invoked the Avignon Papacy — a dark chapter when secular powers used force to control the Catholic Church — a reference some in the Vatican interpreted as a veiled military threat against the Holy See.
The confrontation came after Pope Leo publicly condemned a world driven by “a diplomacy based on force” and a growing “zeal for war” — remarks that reportedly enraged Pete Hegseth and Pentagon officials, who viewed them as a direct challenge to the U.S.
The fallout has been immediate and significant. The Vatican has indefinitely postponed a planned U.S. visit. And instead of coming to America, Leo will spend July 4, 2026, in Lampedusa, standing with migrants, a powerful and deliberate rebuke. For the first time in modern history, the Pentagon offered no Good Friday services for Catholics this year.
Journalist Christopher Hale notes: “Earlier this year, Pete Hegseth invited his pastor to speak at the Pentagon. That pastor has called for banning public expressions of Catholicism in the United States.”
While tensions escalated behind closed doors, Pope Leo didn’t back down. He doubled down.
This is an extraordinary moment and one that could reshape the relationship between the United States and the Catholic Church for years to come.
It goes without saying that the rogue President and the people behind him would have no hesitation in taking out a Pope.
America is a country where its president declared he would bomb a country of 92 million back to the Stone Age, would kill a civilisation, would wipe out heritage sites. Put starkly Trump is a mass killer.
So very much yes. If needs be this crime commision would wipe out a Pope. Of that there is no doubt.
God is on Trump’s side and not on the side of the leader of nearly one and a half billion Catholics. But the world, and Pope Leo know that now all to clearly.