The Catholic Observer reports:

The Defense Department summoned the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S. to the Pentagon in January and subjected him to 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,” according to published reports.

Elbridge A. Colby, the Defense Department’s undersecretary for policy, summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who had served as the Holy See’s apostolic nuncio to the U.S. for a decade before retiring a month ago, The Free Press first reported, citing unnamed senior Vatican sources.

The newsletter Letters from Leo, which covers the Vatican, reported Wednesday that it had confirmed the Free Press account of the closed-door meeting. At one point during the meeting, the newsletter reported, a Defense Department official reached for a 14th-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, when the French monarchy forced the papacy into exile for nearly seven decades.

The reference alarmed some Vatican officials, who interpreted it as a threat to use military force against the Holy See, Letters to Leo’s Christopher Hale reported, citing unnamed Vatican sources.

Both the newsletter and The Free Press reported that the Pentagon’s treatment of Cardinal Pierre during the meeting played a major role in the Vatican’s decision to scrap plans for Pope Leo to visit the U.S. this year. The first U.S.-born Pope will instead spend America’s 250th birthday on Lampedusa, an Italian island known as the first port of call for migrants sailing from North Africa for Europe.

One Vatican official told The Free Press: “The pope may well never visit the United States under this [Trump] administration.” [Continue reading…]