Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin will meet Pope Leo XIV for the first time at the Vatican while on a trip to Italy.<\/p>\n
They are expected to discuss the crisis in the Middle East, including attacks against Christians in the West Bank and Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
The Taoiseach will meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni after his visit to the Vatican.<\/p>\n
Mr Martin is expected to outline Ireland’s priorities in the upcoming Presidency of the EU, which gets under way on 1 July.<\/p>\n
Pope Leo was inaugurated just over a year ago, the first US pontiff, and a spiritual leader seen as combining the social justice instincts of his predecessor Pope Francis, with some of the more conservative priorities of the late Pope Benedict XVI.<\/p>\n
In recent months, he has become distinctly outspoken about what he has condemned as the current zeal for war.<\/p>\n
Although he has not mentioned US President Donald Trump by name, Mr Trump has angrily hit out at the Pope for apparently criticising US foreign policy.<\/p>\n
Mr Martin and Pope Leo are expected to have much to discuss, following the events surrounding the Israeli interception of the Gaza aid flotilla, and US-Israel war on Iran.<\/p>\n
Mr Martin will also have a bilateral meeting with Holy See Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin.<\/p>\n
Following the Vatican meetings, the Taoiseach will visit the Pontifical Irish College in Rome to meet members of the college community and view its archives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin will meet Pope Leo XIV for the first time at the Vatican while on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-461416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}