The Pentagon has denied threatening the Vatican during a late January meeting with the Holy See’s then-envoy to the U.S., as Pope Leo XIV has warned against the growing use of military action in recent months.
The Pentagon’s policy office head, Elbridge Colby, met with Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s former diplomat to the U.S., on Jan. 22 at the Pentagon, during which he warned the then-envoy that the U.S. military has the “power to do whatever it wants — and that the Church had better take its side,” The Free Press reported Monday.
The outlet, citing unnamed sources, reported that a U.S. official raised the threat of the “Avignon Papacy,” referencing the period from 1309 to 1376, when France’s King Philip IV captured the Pope and subsequent popes resided in Avignon instead of Rome.
The Pentagon slammed the report as “grossly false and distorted,” saying that Colby had a “substantive, respectful and professional” meeting with Pierre and his team.
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