Rubio on Tuesday (local time) sought to dispel any suggestions of a rift, indicating that his meeting had been planned before Trump\u2019s verbal attacks on the pope last month, which had raised pique in the halls of the Vatican and divided conservative Catholics in the United States. <\/p>\n
Trump upbraided the Pope on social media after he and other leading members of the church repeatedly spoke out in favour of peace and against the invocation of God\u2019s name to justify war.<\/p>\n
In an interview on Monday (local time) with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Trump said that \u201cthe Pope would rather talk about the fact that it\u2019s okay for Iran \u200bto have a nuclear weapon, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s very good\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI think he\u2019s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people. But \u200bI guess if it\u2019s up to the Pope, he thinks it\u2019s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”<\/p>\n
Rubio sought to clarify Trump\u2019s remarks, telling journalists: \u201cI think what the President basically said is that Iran can\u2019t have a nuclear weapon because they would use it against places that have a lot of Catholics and Christians, and others for that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Pope Leo has spoken out against the US-Israel war on Iran in increasingly vocal terms, and has taken aim at invocations of God to defend war, he has never suggested that it was acceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon \u2013 a device the Vatican has long opposed.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s latest comments follow more detailed criticism he levelled against Pope Leo in April, in which he labelled the Chicago-born pontiff \u201cweak on crime\u201d and \u201cterrible for foreign policy\u201d, in an attack that brought a flurry of rebukes.<\/p>\n
Shortly after Trump delivered those comments, Pope Leo told reporters that he had \u201cno fear of the Trump Administration\u201d. He later made a series of speeches during his trip to Africa in which he decried \u201ctyrants\u201d who funded wars.<\/p>\n
\u2013 The Washington Post<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rubio on Tuesday (local time) sought to dispel any suggestions of a rift, indicating that his meeting had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[806,1975,650,212788,13982,3054,2178,36123,6204,4756,1360,42,293,16609,92640,43,603,3111,384,7254,212787,95426,2572,82649,29689,9939,53316,1361,40,38,41,39,2179,9938,76367,212786,21539,16963,1299,102,26157,149502],"class_list":["post-413890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-as","tag-at","tag-brands","tag-catholics","tag-continues","tag-criticism","tag-donald","tag-endangering","tag-fine","tag-foreign","tag-having","tag-headlines","tag-his","tag-iran","tag-lashes","tag-news","tag-nuclear","tag-out","tag-people","tag-policy","tag-pontiffs","tag-pope","tag-president","tag-religious","tag-row","tag-states","tag-suggesting","tag-that","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trump","tag-united","tag-unleashed","tag-untrue","tag-views","tag-weapon","tag-who","tag-with","tag-words","tag-xiv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}