Rubio Travels to Rome to Repair Relations With Italy and the Vatican

Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Rome May 6-8 on a mission to repair relations with two of Washington's closest European counterparts, the Italian government and the Holy See, following a period of open friction between President Donald Trump and both Pope Leo XIV and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni ^[1][2]. The State Department announced the trip in an official release, with spokesperson Tommy Pigott stating the visit's purpose was to "advance bilateral relations with Italy and the Vatican" ^[3]. The trip marks at least Rubio's third visit to Italy in his current role as the nation's top diplomat ^[4].

The diplomatic underpinning of the visit is grounded in Article II of the Constitution and the Secretary of State's statutory authority under 22 U.S.C. § 2651a to conduct foreign affairs on behalf of the executive. The immediate trigger for the trip was a weeks-long public confrontation between Trump and Pope Leo, the first American-born pontiff. Trump attacked Leo on Truth Social and in remarks to reporters, calling him "WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy," and saying he did not want a pope who condoned Iran's nuclear program ^[5][6]. Leo responded from aboard his papal plane at the start of an Africa tour, stating he had "no fear of the Trump administration" and would continue his appeals for peace ^[7]. The dispute began after Leo criticized the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, which launched Feb. 28 under the codename Operation Epic Fury, describing Trump's pre-ceasefire threat that "an entire civilization will die tonight" as "truly unacceptable" ^[8][9].

The friction then spread to the U.S.-Italy bilateral relationship. Meloni, a long-standing Trump ally, publicly defended Leo's peace appeals, and Trump in turn criticized her publicly for those comments ^[10][11]. Rubio confirmed in the trip's scheduling that he would meet with Italian counterparts on "shared security interests and strategic alignment," and NBC News confirmed that Meloni herself met with Rubio on Friday, May 8, during the visit ^[12][20]. The Italian troop-basing question gave those talks added weight: as of the end of 2025, approximately 12,662 active-duty U.S. troops were stationed across six bases in Italy, and Trump had told reporters he was weighing a drawdown comparable to the Pentagon's announced withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany ^[13][14].

On the Vatican side, the 45-minute closed-door audience between Rubio and Leo on May 7 was the first meeting between the pope and a Trump Cabinet official in nearly a year ^[15]. The State Department framed the agenda as covering the situation in the Middle East and "mutual interests in the Western Hemisphere," a formulation that U.S. officials and analysts have consistently read to include Cuba, given the Vatican's historic role as a mediator between Washington and Havana, most notably during the 2014-2015 diplomacy that produced the Obama-era normalization ^[2][3]. Rubio also met separately with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who had publicly called Trump's attacks on the pope "a bit strange, to say the least" ^[16]. U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Brian Burch characterized the Rubio-Leo meeting in advance as an opportunity for "frank conversation" through "fraternity and authentic dialogue" ^[17].

Rubio is no newcomer to this diplomatic channel. In May 2025, he and Vice President JD Vance attended Leo's inaugural Mass at St. Peter's Square and held a private audience with the pontiff the following day, establishing a direct personal line of communication early in the pontificate ^[18][19]. That prior relationship informed the administration's decision to assign Rubio, a practicing Catholic, to manage a dispute that carries domestic political weight: Trump won 55% of Catholic voters in 2024, and midterm congressional elections are approaching ^[20][10]. The dispute has drawn rebuke from across the U.S. Catholic institutional spectrum, including from Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who said he was "disheartened" by Trump's language toward the Holy Father ^[21].

The Rome visit fits a recognizable pattern in Rubio's tenure: the secretary has repeatedly been deployed to absorb or moderate fallout from Trump's public statements toward allied governments, including those in Europe and at NATO ^[10]. The administration's simultaneous pressure on European partners to contribute more to the Iran war effort, combined with threats to draw down American troop presence on the continent, has complicated the bilateral framework that the Rubio meetings were nominally designed to reinforce. Whether the talks produced concrete movement on any of the stated agenda items, including Western Hemisphere policy, security burden-sharing, or the terms of the U.S.-Vatican dialogue on the Iran conflict, has not been confirmed in official readouts from either government.

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