The Pope, the Pentagon, and a President Unraveling

April 9, 2026

The Pope, the Pentagon, and a President Unraveling

When the Trump administration summoned the Vatican’s ambassador to issue military threats — and then its president threatened to exterminate an entire civilization — it revealed something far darker than a foreign policy dispute. It revealed a crisis of leadership that the 25th Amendment was designed to address.

In January 2026, in a closed-door meeting for which there is no public record, a senior Trump administration official summoned the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States — Cardinal Christophe Pierre — to the Pentagon. What was said in that room has sent shockwaves through international diplomacy, strained the relationship between the White House and the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, and added yet another chapter to what is becoming an unmistakable pattern of erratic, authoritarian behavior at the highest levels of American power.

The meeting, first reported by The New Republic and widely corroborated since, was no friendly exchange. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby allegedly told Cardinal Pierre bluntly: “The United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.” One official present then invoked the Avignon Papacy — a 14th-century period when the French crown militarily subjugated the Catholic Church, forcing it to relocate from Rome to Avignon. The message was unmistakable to Vatican historians, who immediately recognized it as a threat of physical coercion against the Holy See itself.

What Is the Avignon Papacy?

The Avignon Papacy (1309–1377) was a period when French royal power forced the Catholic Church’s seat from Rome to Avignon, France, bending the papacy to secular political will.
Invoking this period in a diplomatic setting is understood as a reference to the “implicit model for what happens to religious institutions that oppose state power,” according to analyst Mike Young.
Multiple Vatican officials interpreted the reference as a threat of potential military force against the Holy See — a historically unprecedented assertion from U.S. officials.

A Threat Unprecedented in American History

To be clear about the gravity of this moment: The New Republic has noted that there are no public records of any previous meetings between Vatican and U.S. officials at the Pentagon, let alone an instance in which the world power suggested it could force the Bishop of Rome into captivity. What the Trump administration attempted was not diplomacy — it was intimidation of a foreign sovereign religious institution, one with deep roots in the lives of roughly 20% of American adults.

The backdrop matters enormously. Pope Leo XIV — the first American-born pope in history, elected on May 8, 2025 — had delivered a “State of the World” address in January that was interpreted by Trump officials as hostile. A particular line reportedly enraged the administration: “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.” This is a statement of fact, not a partisan attack — and the administration’s furious reaction to it tells us everything we need to know about how power-drunk this White House has become.

The Catholic Church had better take its side. — Reported statement by a senior Pentagon official to Cardinal Christophe Pierre, Vatican’s U.S. Ambassador, January 2026

The fallout was swift and severe. The Daily Beast and Military.com have both reported that Vatican officials were so alarmed by the Pentagon’s tactics that Pope Leo cancelled plans to visit the United States. The Holy See also declined a White House invitation to host the pontiff for America’s 250th birthday celebration on July 4th. Instead, Pope Leo announced plans to spend July 4th at Lampedusa — a tiny island between Tunisia and Sicily where African migrants wash ashore by the thousands. The symbolism could not be more pointed, nor more deliberate.

“A Whole Civilization Will Die Tonight”

If the January Pentagon meeting represented a slow, chilling erosion of democratic norms, the events of April 8, 2026 were a cliff. As the U.S.-Israel war with Iran escalated, President Trump posted on Truth Social: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” The post — with its ambiguous, apocalyptic tone — sent officials scrambling to clarify whether the President was threatening the deliberate annihilation of the Iranian civilian population.

Pope Leo responded directly and without diplomatic hedging. Speaking to reporters at his residence at Castel Gandolfo, he said: “Today, as we all know, there was this threat against all the people of Iran. This is truly unacceptable.” It marked the first time Leo had commented so directly on Trump’s conduct, and Vatican historians called the moment — in which the Pope also urged citizens to contact their political representatives to advocate for peace — extraordinarily rare in the modern papacy.

The White House’s response was characteristically tone-deaf. Spokesperson Anna Kelly told reporters that the president “will always stand with innocent civilians while annihilating the terrorists responsible for threatening our country.” The administration appeared not to appreciate the cognitive dissonance of claiming to stand with civilians while threatening to end an entire civilization.

The Moral Leadership Vacuum in the Oval Office

What makes this crisis so extraordinary is the unlikely coalition it has assembled in opposition to the President. When Pope Leo XIV — a man who spent months deliberately avoiding anything explicitly political — feels compelled to cross lines he has never crossed, something has gone deeply wrong at the top of the American government. When former Trump allies like Tucker Carlson describe the president’s threats as “a war crime, a moral crime,” and former stalwart Marjorie Taylor Greene screams “25TH AMENDMENT!!!” on social media, the writing on the wall is not subtle.

The decision to militarily bully the Vatican is not an isolated lapse. It fits a pattern: bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities without congressional approval, kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, threatening U.S. allies and claiming rights to Greenland and Canada, and fiercely advocating for the dissolution of NATO. These are not the acts of a president leading from strength. They are the acts of an executive branch running on impulse, surrounded by enablers, and utterly unmoored from the constitutional and moral constraints of the office.

A Pattern of Unchecked Aggression

Bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities without seeking congressional approval
Allegedly kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
Threatened to seize control of Canada and Greenland
Advocated for dissolving NATO, undermining decades of allied security
Threatened to destroy Iranian “power plants and bridges” — potential war crimes under international law
Summoned the Vatican’s diplomat to the Pentagon to issue military threats

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The 25th Amendment: Not a Last Resort, But a Constitutional Duty

The 25th Amendment to the Constitution exists precisely for moments like this. Section 4 allows the Vice President and a majority of Cabinet members to declare the President “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” transferring power to the Vice President. It then requires two-thirds of each chamber of Congress to sustain the removal if the President contests it. It has never been invoked. But more than 70 lawmakers — including Senators Ed Markey and Ron Wyden, and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ro Khanna, Rashida Tlaib, and dozens more — called for its invocation this week.

The Constitutional Case for the 25th Amendment

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment was designed for precisely the scenario we are now witnessing: a president whose conduct raises serious questions about his capacity to rationally discharge the duties of office.

Consider the evidence before us: A president who publicly threatens to exterminate an entire civilian population with a cryptic social media post. An administration that bullies the leader of the world’s largest religious institution with historical references to military subjugation. A Vice President who, when asked about reports of the Vatican threat, claimed he didn’t know who Cardinal Pierre was — even though Vance had personally invited the Pope to the White House months earlier.

Sen. Chris Murphy put it plainly: “No President in control of his senses would publicly promise to eradicate an entire civilization.” Rep. Ro Khanna added: “He is threatening the entire destruction of a civilization. He is calling Iranians animals.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated directly: “If the Cabinet is not willing to invoke the 25th Amendment and restore sanity, Republicans must reconvene Congress to end this war.”

The practical barriers remain formidable. Vance and the Cabinet have shown no willingness to act, and Republicans in Congress have largely circled the wagons. But the political and moral case for invocation has never been stronger — and that case grows with every Truth Social post threatening nuclear-level destruction.

What Real Leadership Looks Like

Contrast the administration’s behavior with that of Pope Leo XIV. Here is a 70-year-old man — an American, born in Chicago — who chose the moral weight of Lampedusa over the political convenience of the White House lawn. Who waited months before crossing a political line, and when he did, chose words of restraint and humanity: “I would like to invite everyone to think in their hearts of so many innocent children, so many totally innocent elderly people who would also be victims of this escalation.”

That is what leadership sounds like. It sounds like humility. Like restraint. Like the recognition that power carries moral weight and that the measure of a leader is not the force they can bring to bear, but the lives they choose to protect.

The Trump administration, by contrast, measured its strength by summoning a Cardinal to a Pentagon briefing room and invoking medieval papal subjugation as a threat. It measured its power by posting on social media that a civilization might die. It measured its resolve by threatening war crimes against civilian infrastructure. As one Catholic leader put it, threatening the papacy “shows the fear that Trump officials have of the fact that Pope Leo, an American, has more power and influence than the president on the world stage.”

That fear — of a Pope, of a moral voice, of the very concept of accountable leadership — is the most revealing thing of all. An administration that bullies the Vatican and threatens civilizations is not a strong administration. It is a frightened one. And a frightened administration with nuclear weapons is precisely what the 25th Amendment was written to address.

The question is not whether the case exists. It is whether anyone in a position of power has the courage to make it.