Yves here. Wowsers, John Helmer provides a deep dive on the Trump Administration’s muscling of the Catholic Church and the Holy See’s pushback.
By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears
When it comes to the role God plays in Vatican politics, inside the Holy See and outside in the warmaking capital of the US, there can never be too much ado about nothing.
You don’t have to be a believer to understand that in war and politics, God is Not Nothing.
President Donald Trump made it clear that he and God were head to head and holding hands during the Isfahan operation on the weekend, April 4-5. He — Trump, that is — has also been making sure that his most senior Roman Catholic officials (lead image, right), Vice President JD Vance (convert) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (birth) – both of them candidates in the running to succeed Trump – keep American Catholic voters loyal to his presidency as they were in the 2024 election.
And so it came to pass that on January 22, a Catholic second-stringer in the Administration, Elbridge Colby, Under Secretary of War for Policy, called the Papal Nuncio in Washington, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, for a reproving lecture on papal politics. This followed the refusal of the new Pope Leo XIV to agree to Vance’s invitation to visit the US this year; and one week before Pierre turned 80 years old and signed his resignation to Rome. After a decade in Washington, the cardinal decided not to go out with a whimper, but with a bang.
The public report of what Colby had told him was leaked in the first week of April, reported here in a publication directed by a Jewish convert, almost three months after the Pentagon meeting. “The Vatican and the White House Are on the Outs” was the headline. The identified source was “Vatican officials briefed on the meeting, who spoke with The Free Press on the condition of anonymity”. They said that Colby gave Pierre “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.”
The timing of this leak followed after Trump launched his declared genocidal war against Iran; and after the Netanyahu regime closed the Holy Places in Jerusalem during the Easter celebrations.
Leo XIV then announced in his Easter Mass homily on April 5: “death is always lurking. We see it present in injustices, in partisan selfishness, in the oppression of the poor, in the lack of attention given to the most vulnerable. We see it in violence, in the wounds of the world, in the cry of pain that rises from every corner because of the abuses that crush the weakest among us, because of the idolatry of profit that plunders the earth’s resources, because of the violence of war that kills and destroys.”
The Pope added: “Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars.”
On the next day, April 6, in his Washington press conference, Trump replied with seventeen (17) mentions of God.
“God was watching us,” Trump said of the Isfahan operation. “Well, it was the Easter — we were in Easter territory, I guess, but God was watching us…God is good every day. And to our adversaries watching from Tehran, let this be a clear message to the United States military will go anywhere at any time to protect our own and complete the mission. We execute with precision.” Asked by a reporter to clarify if “God supports the United States actions in this war?”, Trump replied: “I do. Because God is good. Because God is good, and God wants to see people taken care of god doesn’t like what’s happening. I don’t like what’s happening everyone says I enjoy it. I don’t enjoy this I don’t enjoy it. These two guys don’t enjoy it. You know, people say, oh boy, they’re so tough. They don’t want — they don’t like — I don’t like seeing people killed.”
The Pope’s foreign minister, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, then reacted with a statement on April 9. “We cannot surrender to the logic of the strongest because that bends international law to its own interests. We cannot move from the force of law to the law of force.” Parolin took shots at President Vladimir Putin, Trump and the Israelis. “Many governments have expressed indignation over attacks against Ukrainian civilians by Russian missiles and drones, imposing sanctions on the aggressors. I do not think the same has happened with the tragedy of the destruction of Gaza.”
The Roman Curia has been under pressure from the American bishops to take a clear stance against Trump’s war and against his threats of genocide against Iran.
Archbishop Paul Coakley, speaking for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, followed the Pope’s Easter speech with one of his own, explicitly against Trump: “The threat of destroying a whole civilization and the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure cannot be morally justified. There are other ways to resolve conflict between peoples. I call on President Trump to step back from the precipice of war and negotiate a just settlement for the sake of peace and before more lives are lost.” In the campaign to keep God on the side of Catholic voters for Trump — begun at Colby’s meeting with the Papal Nuncio in January and ending with the Pope ordering the US bishops to vote their consciences against Trump — the Christian faction in the White House has been beaten as badly as the Jewish faction was beaten by Iran on the battlefield of the Persian Gulf.
Once upon a time, there were well-informed reporters on Vatican politics in Paris, Dublin and Rome. Their reports of exactly what has just transpired are missing now because they – notably, dearest friend of mine Nicolas Boult – are dead.
For details of Colby’s lecture on January 22 to Cardinal Pierre, read more here.
Leading up to their meeting, the cardinal, the Pope, and his American bishops had been discussing in secret how to respond to the White House pressure for Leo XIV to make a ceremonial visit to Trump ahead of Election Day on November 3. Trump had wanted God’s mandate; the Church said no.
Read more of the background – without the politics – here
Cardinal Pierre meeting Under Secretary Colby at the Pentagon on January 22. Source: https://x.com/DOWResponse/status/2042300020494418303
Colby attempted to silence the leaking breach with the Pope. “Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby,” he tweeted, “had a substantive, respectful, and professional meeting with Cardinal Pierre, the then-Papal Nuncio, and his team on January 22, 2026. During the cordial meeting, they discussed a range of topics, including issues of morality in foreign policy, the logic of the U.S. National Security Strategy, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and other topics. Cardinal Pierre expressed his appreciation for the outreach and both sides looked forward to continued open and respectful dialogue. In light of grossly false and distorted recent reporting, the Department of War repeats its statement: Recent reporting of the meeting is highly exaggerated and distorted. The meeting between Pentagon and Vatican officials was a respectful and reasonable discussion. We have nothing but the highest regard and welcome continued dialogue with the Holy See.”
The reported reference at Colby’s meeting to the French transfer of the popes from Rome to Avignon during the 14th century was especially galling to the Nuncio Pierre, and embarrassing for Trump’s appointee to the Holy See, Brian Burch. Burch had been in charge of mobilizing Catholic votes during the election campaign of 2024.
Burch has tweeted that yesterday (April 9) he had been “speaking” with Pierre in Rome. Speaking appears to refer to a telephone conversation, not a face-to-face meeting. “I was pleased to speak today with His Eminence, Cardinal Christophe Pierre. As expected, he confirmed that recent media characterizations of his meeting with Undersecretary Colby are ‘fabrications’ that were ‘just invented.’ Given the intelligence and seriousness of Mr. Colby, I was likewise not suprised when His Eminence acknowledged there were no threats of any kind in the meeting. ‘It was a frank and cordial meeting that took place two months ago.’ Threat of Avignon? ‘None.’”
In the religious doctrine which all three of them have been educated to follow, lying is a venial sin, not usually a mortal one.
The Catholic Vice President was careful in what he has said. “[Vance] told media he would ‘like to talk to Cardinal Christophe Pierre and, frankly, to our people [Colby], to figure out what actually happened. I think itʼs always a bad idea to offer an opinion on stories that are unconfirmed and uncorroborated, so Iʼm not going to do that.”
Pierre had retired after his 80th birthday on January 30, 2026; he officially resigned his Washington post on March 7. When Burch presented himself this week, Pierre was out of office. It is not known if his successor, appointed by Leo to follow Pierre to Washington, Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, was present on the telephone line or at the meeting table. Caccia, an Italian, has been serving as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer at the United Nations. In an earlier posting between 2007-2017, Caccia was the nuncio in Lebanon under Israeli fire. There is no record of his public statements in support of the Vatican doctrine at the time of “moral proportionality” between Israel’s attacks and Hezbollah’s defence; he avoided criticism of Israel.
Archbishop Caccia meets Brian Burch, April 8, 2026: https://www.facebook.com/holysee.usembassy/posts/ambassador-burch-welcomed-archbishop-caccia-the-new-nuncio-to-the-united-states-/1357052016454983/
The Catholic press in Paris and Dublin are treating the Colby-Pierre story as a parochial American Church affair and ignoring it. La Croix is waiting on today’s (April 10) meeting between President Emmanuel Macron and the Pope. In the meantime, the French newspaper is reporting Leo’s April 7 statement condemning Trump’s threats as “truly unacceptable for all the people of Iran.” The Catholic tribune editorialised: “For this pope disinclined to make his criticism personal, this move is significant. It marks a new hardening of the pope’s tone, after his first shift on March 31.”
In Rome, Mattia Ferraresi, the reporter who broke the Colby threat story in the US, followed up yesterday (April 9) with a report that his Vatican sources have met with the Pope and briefed him on what has followed the initial disclosures.
The latest US opinion polling shows the political urgency for Trump, Vance, Rubio, Colby and other officials, the Christians and the Jews, if the majority support which Catholic voters gave Trump in the 2024 election is lost now. In the presidential vote, according to the Pew Research Centre study released last year, the Catholic vote for Trump was 55% — white Catholics 62%, Hispanic Catholics 41% — compared to 43% for Kamala Harris. For the Democrats, there was a swing of 12 percentage points in the Catholic vote against the party’s candidate from the result in 2020. Compared to 2020, Trump gained a 5 percentage point swing from white Catholics, 10 percentage points from Hispanic Catholics.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/ Note the Jewish vote for Trump in 2024 was only 35% compared to 63% for Harris.
In new polling of late March, reported by Newsweek, “Trump’s approval [is] slipping into negative territory among both Catholics and Protestants. Among Catholic voters, 48 percent said they approve of Trump’s job performance, while 52 percent disapprove, a net negative of 4 points… Just weeks earlier, Catholics had leaned the other way. In the prior Fox News poll, conducted February 28 through March 2, 2026, Trump held a narrow edge with Catholics. In that survey, 52 percent approved and 48 percent disapproved, giving him a net positive rating of 4 points.” “Taken together, the two polls suggest a notable shift among Catholic voters over a period of several weeks, flipping Trump’s standing with that group from a net positive to a net negative. Attention around U.S.-Vatican relations intensified after Vance said he would look into reports that emerged on Monday about the January meeting between Pentagon and Vatican officials.”
Source: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-flips-with-christians-11741961
Source: https://x.com/OSVNews/status/2042354432218730819
As the Catholic anti-war movement picks up momentum with sermon support from the diocesan pulpits and the Vatican, fear of midterm election defeat is growing for Trump and his chief pollster, Tony Fabrizio (Catholic), whose principal ally in the White House is Chief of Staff Susan Wiles (Episcopalian, “Catholic lite”).
This vote swing is a larger, longer term threat to the two Catholic presidential successors, Vance and Rubio. The US press has yet to report the political fallout for them. It is one of the reasons Vance has been accepted by Trump at the leadership of the US negotiations with Iran in Islamabad this weekend. The subordination there of the two Jewish negotiators, Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner, also occurred in the Abu Dhabi round of negotiations with the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in January. At that time, the Jews in the US delegation – Witkoff, Kushner and Joshua Gruenbaum – were subordinated to the US Army Secretary and Vance protégé, Daniel Driscoll (Southern Baptist), his advisor General Randy George (then Army Chief of Staff) and General Alexus Grynkewicz, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
NOTE: In Colby’s threat to do to Pope Leo XIV what had been done by France’s King Philip IV to Pope Boniface VIII at the start of the 14th century “Avignon Papacy” he missed a much more recent precedent. That was Napoleon’s arrest and seizure of Pope Pius VII in 1809. The first was a fight over state taxation of church property and of state courts over church courts. The second was a fight over the primacy of the state over the church in Napoleon’s new French constitution.
Read the second story in the context of a similar move the Russian Church and Patriarch made to put the name of God in President Vladimir Putin’s revision of the Russian Constitution in 2021.
