Leo used the address to denounce a world ruled by “a diplomacy based on force” and “zeal for war.”

In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture.

America, Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.

As tempers rose, one U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.

That scene, broken this week by Mattia Ferraresi in an extraordinary piece of journalism for The Free Press, may be the most remarkable moment in the long and knotted history of the American republic’s relationship with the Catholic Church.

In the speech that enraged Pete Hegseth and top Pentagon officials, Pope Leo XIV said: “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”

“War is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.

“The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.”

Pete Hegseth’s pastor and mentor says the United States should ban public Masses, Marian processions, and Corpus Christi devotions.

Hegseth invited the anti-Catholic preacher to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon on February 14.

https://www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/pete-hegseths-pastor-wants-to-ban

For the first time in modern history, the Pentagon offered no Good Friday services for Catholics this year.

While Catholics don’t celebrate Mass on Good Friday, they do venerate the cross of Jesus Christ and receive the Eucharist.

Earlier this year, Pete Hegseth invited his pastor to speak at the Pentagon. That pastor has called for banning public expressions of Catholicism in the United States.

https://www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/trump-vance-white-house-escalates

Here is an Archive link with the full article

https://archive.ph/H3cfR