Pentagon dope vs. the American Pope

A new first for tRump’s goons: Threatening the Vatican.

Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.

“The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

Here’s the English translation of the Pope’s speech. There’s certainly plenty in there that I’m sure the average right winger would agree with. But apparently his comments about war – It’s bad – were too much for some snowflakes in the Big Bold Manly Warfighting wing of the government.

One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the fourteenth century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France.

Again, the Pope didn’t mention the U.S. or any U.S. officials by name. So far as I can tell, this is as close as he got.

The escalating tensions in the Caribbean Sea and along the American Pacific coast are also a cause for serious concern. I wish to repeat my urgent appeal that peaceful political solutions to the current situation should be sought, keeping in mind the common good of the peoples and not the defense of partisan interests.

This pertains in particular to Venezuela, in light of recent developments. In this regard, I renew my appeal to respect the will of the Venezuelan people, and to safeguard the human and civil rights of all, ensuring a future of stability and concord. To this end, inspiration may be drawn from the example of two of its children whom I had the joy of canonizing last October – José Gregorio Hernández and Sister Carmen Rendiles. May their witness inspire the building of a society founded on justice, truth, freedom and fraternity, and thus enable the nation to rise from the grave crisis that has afflicted it for so many years.

It seems that was enough to trigger tantrums and threats against a world leader. Of course now the Pentagon is claiming that the story is a gross exaggeration and the meeting was respectful. From this crew that sounds like a bully trying to claim that he took the little kids’ lunch money to keep it safe. Also, The Free Press, which still lists Bari Weiss as founder and editor, originally broke the story, which makes it funnier.

A quick look at the Pope’s speeches following the threat indicate that Colby – who describes himself as a “committed and serious Catholic” – should have saved his breath for singing tRump’s praises. For example, portions of the Pope’s Palm Sunday speech seem to be aimed directly at bloodthirsty god-bothering goons like SoW Schmegbreath.

Pope Leo XIV went on to recall the prophet Isaiah’s words: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15).

“Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” said the Pope. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

He was also very critical of tRump’s threat to destroy Iran.

I guess it is just as well that Leo 14 had already turned down an invite from the White House.

Tensions had not been mended by February, when the Holy See rejected the White House’s invitation to host Pope Leo—the religious order’s first U.S.-born pontiff—for America’s 250th anniversary in July. Instead, the Catholic leader has arranged to visit a very different locale on July 4: Lampedusa, a tiny island between Tunisia and Sicily where North African immigrants wash ashore by the thousands.

Looks like he picked a side.