politics
Secretary of State Marco Rubio Meets Pope Leo XIV at Vatican
Rubio will meet the first U.S.-born pope after standing in at a White House press briefing on Tuesday. The appearance drew online attention and comparisons to Vice President JD Vance ahead of potential 2028 interest.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio is traveling to the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Leo XIV on Thursday. The trip had been planned earlier, Rubio said during a White House press briefing on Tuesday in which he stood in for spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave.
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Rubio, who represented Florida in the Senate from 2011 to 2025 and sought the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, spoke to reporters for close to an hour. He addressed an ongoing war in Iran that has sent gas prices higher as well as an administration initiative on the Strait of Hormuz that President Trump later adjusted.
Rubio also discussed the U.S. Agency for International Development. Over the weekend he DJed at a family wedding.
"It's a trip we had planned from before and obviously we had some stuff that happened. There's a lot to talk about with the Vatican," Rubio said. Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pope, has criticized some Trump administration policies. Rubio was raised Catholic.
Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism as an adult, traveled to Iowa on Tuesday to support Republican Rep. Zach Nunn. A video clip showed Vance losing his place in his speech and forgetting the name of Nunn's challenger.
The vessels' operators have not been publicly identified by the U.S. government in connection with the Strait of Hormuz initiative. No publicly released evidence has documented specific claims about certain aspects of the Iran conflict referenced in the briefing. [Affected country]'s foreign ministry has not commented as of the dates covered in reporting on the war.
