Pope Francis turned down a meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over concerns that he would be used in political messaging to support President Trump’s reelection efforts, a spokesman for the Vatican said.
“Yes, that is precisely why the pope will not meet American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,” Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s secretary for relations with states, told Italian news agency Ansa.
Pompeo planned to meet with the Catholic leader at the Vatican during a weeklong trip to Europe.
Pompeo still met with top Vatican officials, and the pope’s absence marked a difference from when the two met in 2019 to discuss religious freedom during the impeachment hearings in Washington.
The pope was also reportedly concerned by Pompeo’s comments regarding the Holy See’s growing relationship with China and the renewal of a 2018 agreement that aims to welcome Chinese Catholics by legitimizing the Beijing-mandated Chinese Catholic Church.
The Holy See is the supreme body of the government for the Catholic Church and cooperates with the United States on international issues of mutual interest, including human rights.
While Pompeo didn’t explicitly condemn the deal, he made multiple challenges toward the Pope during a speech he gave at a symposium hosted by the U.S. mission to the Holy See.
“Countries must sometimes make compromises to advance good ends,” Pompeo said. “The Church is in a different position. Earthly considerations shouldn’t discourage principled stances based on eternal truths.”
Pompeo also referred to the late Pope John Paul II and his opposition to the Soviet Union and other communist regimes during the Cold War, contrasting the current deal with China.
Pompeo pushed back on allegations that his lobbying efforts to get the Vatican to get rid of its agreement with Beijing is politically motivated, like Vatican officials have suggested.
“They’re looking for Donald Trump to get elected, and everything is based on that logic,” Honduran Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, who is close with the Pope, told Italian media. “In this sense, I don’t think they’re acting in the interests of Americans.”
Pompeo called the accusations “crazy,” reiterating the administration’s aggressive recognition of China as a threatening foreign actor.
“Our policy has been all along to bring every actor who can benefit the people of China to take away the horrors of the authoritarian regime that the Chinese Communist Party is inflicting on people,” Pompeo said. “That was our mission set, and it will remain our mission set. It’s been since long before the election. It will remain so after the election.”
The pope has sparred with Pompeo’s boss in the past over issues such as immigration, racial justice, and Trump’s “America First” policies.
The pope criticized Trump’s signature 2016 campaign promise to erect a wall on the southern border to deter anyone from illegally crossing into the U.S.
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian,” the pope said at the time. “I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that.”
Trump hit back at the pope, calling his comments “disgraceful.”
“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” Trump said. “If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which, as everyone knows, is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.”
More recently, some observed that the pope appeared to support anti-racism protests happening in the U.S. following the May death of George Floyd, whom he named twice. He also offered to support a U.S. bishop who knelt in prayer during a Black Lives Matter protest.
As for Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, a group called “Catholics for Biden” has claimed the former vice president aligns himself with the pope’s values.
Though Biden has come under fire by more socially conservative Catholics for his pro-abortion rights stance, Biden said the pope has never refused to give him communion after reports that a Catholic priest denied him.
“It’s not a position that I’ve found anywhere else, including from the Holy Father, who gives me Communion,” Biden told PBS News Hour in 2019.
