GoKawiilThank you for reading! Letters from Leo is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Before you read on: Pope Leo XIV has asked Americans to contact their members of Congress and demand an end to the war in Iran. Answer the pope’s call in one click at standwithpopeleo.com, an app we built to make it as easy as possible.
Make A One-Time Gift to Support My Work
[UPDATE at 4:33 PM EDT: Letters from Leo can now independently confirm The Free Press report that the meeting took place — and that some Vatican officials were so alarmed by the Pentagon’s tactics that they shelved plans for Pope Leo XIV to visit the United States later this year.
Other officials in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.]
In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture.
America, Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.
As tempers rose, an unidentified U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.
Shortly after Pope Leo XIV’s State of the World speech, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned the Holy See’s then-ambassador to the U.S., Cardinal Christophe Pierre, to the Pentagon.
... continue reading