U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, D.C., January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump is sending Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the Vatican to meet with Pope Leo XIV this week, he announced over the weekend. Reports claimed that it's an effort to clean up Trump's feud with the popular pontiff.
On Monday, however, there is a new question about whether Rubio is going to court the Vatican as an ally for military action against Cuba.
"If true, it’s an absolutely wild gambit to try to preemptively silence Pope Leo XIV," wrote Christopher Hale, who writes the "Letters from Leo" Substack.
USA Today correspondent Francesca Chambers reported that Cuba is on the agenda for discussions.
Hale remarked that Rubio was a strange choice, but if the meeting is about more than repairing the relationship between Trump and the pope, it might explain why Rubio is being sent over Vance.
"Marco Rubio was raised Catholic, converted to Mormonism in his youth, left Mormonism, became Catholic again, regularly attends a Miami evangelical church for 23 years, he called 'his church,' and still identifies as a Mass-attending Catholic," Hale said on X.
Vice President JD Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019.
Vance and Rubio got an audience and a photo with the new pope, less than a month after he was chosen by the conclave in May 2025. They delivered a personal invitation from Trump to Pope Leo to visit the White House. Leo smiled politely and put it aside.
At one point, Vance said that the people of the United States are "extremely excited about you."
Pope Leo replied, "Humm. Okay."
Asked about whether he would accept the invitation, the pope politely declined.
Now, Leo is only meeting with Rubio after Vance told the pontiff to "be careful" when speaking about theology.
"The choice is a remarkable snub of the highest-ranking Catholic in the federal government — and it forces Rubio to defend an Iran war that is now his alone," said Hale. "That tells you how badly the rift inside this administration has fractured."
Hale confirmed that the White House specifically requested that Rubio meet with the pope.
He noted that the most recent iteration of the feud between the administration and Pope Leo manifested in an accusation by Vance’s allies that "the Vatican was coordinating with American journalists and operatives to wound the vice president."
It comes after an accredited Vatican correspondent confirmed that the Vatican ambassador had a tense exchange with a Pentagon official. Previous reports said that threats were issued by a U.S. official, though the Pentagon has denied that.
"From the chaplaincy of the U.S. armed forces, the military archbishop declared the Iran war unjust," wrote Hale. "The Vatican’s own secretary of state told Trump directly to put an end to it. Pope Leo XIV himself called for aerial bombing to be banned forever. Through all of it, Vance kept attacking. He has now been rebuked by two popes, and his response was to publish a book about finding God."
Hale noted that the encounter will likely be awkward, as Rubio will sit across from a man who has spent months championing a ceasefire.
If Rubio is being sent to court the Vatican's blessing on Cuba, Hale wrote, he isn't likely to succeed.
"There’s no doubt a military operation in Cuba would be publicly and vigorously opposed by the first U.S.-born pontiff," Hale said on X.