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Archbishop Thomas Wenski speaks during a roundtable to discuss the \u201cDignity Act\u201d bill by Congresswoman Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar, at the Westchester Regional Library, with a group of community leaders, on Tuesday September 23, 2025.<\/p>\n
Pedro Portal<\/p>\n
pportal@miamiherald.com<\/p>\n
As Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with Pope Leo XIV this week, Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski said he hopes the two leaders can move forward on one issue of particular interest to South Florida: humanitarian aid to Cuba.<\/p>\n
The meeting came amid an escalating conflict in the Middle East and an increasingly public feud between President Donald Trump and the U.S.-born pope over the war with Iran. But Wenski said the conversation between Rubio and the pope appeared focused on diplomacy \u2014 including conflicts abroad and the suffering of ordinary Cubans.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody could read between the lines, I think they must have been talking about Ukraine, about the Middle East, about Cuba,\u201d Wenski said on Thursday. \u201cThese are concerns for the church because the church has an active presence in all of these places.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott, Rubio and Leo discussed \u201cthe situation in the Middle East and topics of mutual interest in the Western Hemisphere,\u201d in a private meeting that \u201cunderscored the strong relationship between the United States and the Holy See.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the conversation specifics weren\u2019t immediately clear, Rubio has recently emphasized the Vatican\u2019s role in delivering humanitarian aid to Cuba through the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe gave Cuba $6 million of humanitarian aid, but obviously they won\u2019t let us distribute it. We distributed it through the church. We\u2019d like to do more,\u201d Rubio said at a White House briefing on Tuesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n The potential aid, which would be channeled through Catholic charities, would offer a lifeline to struggling Cubans enduring the impact of an economic collapse.<\/p>\n Wenski said cooperation between Washington and the Vatican is essential because the church remains one of the few institutions able to operate on the island with a degree of public trust and reach.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Vatican is not interested in protecting any regime, but it\u2019s interested in the wellbeing of the people,\u201d Wenski said in Spanish.<\/p>\n Church is \u2018not about war\u2019<\/p>\n The meeting between Secretary Rubio and the U.S.-born pope comes just days after Trump renewed his criticism of Pope Leo over the war in Iran. The pope has repeatedly called for peace in the Middle East, criticized the war and condemned Trump\u2019s threats to \u201cannihilate\u201d the Iranian civilization.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Miami\u2019s Archbishop speaks out about Trump\u2019s feud with Pope Leo<\/a><\/p>\n Earlier this week, Trump told a conservative commentator that the pope was \u201cendangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people\u201d and \u201cthe pope would rather talk about the fact that it\u2019s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s very good.\u201d<\/p>\n The pope has never said that it would be acceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n In fact, the Catholic Church has in the past, \u201cbeen very, very strong in its condemnation of nuclear weapons,\u201d said Wenski, adding that the Vatican Council has also called out the United States for being the only country to have used them in retaliation.<\/p>\n \u201cThe President likes to speak in metaphors and hyperboles … But I think the pope\u2019s statement put out very clearly that the church is about peace, not about war, and it\u2019s about minimizing the destruction of war when war happens,\u201d Wenski said.<\/p>\n The pope told reporters when asked about Trump\u2019s latest remarks about<\/a> him that \u201cthe mission of the Church is to proclaim the Gospel, to preach peace,\u201d and \u201cif someone wants to criticize me for proclaiming the Gospel, let him do so truthfully.\u201d<\/p>\n Rubio later backed Trump, saying the president \u201cdoesn\u2019t understand why anybody, leave aside the Pope\u201d would think \u201cthat it\u2019s a good idea for Iran to ever have a nuclear weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Wenski said the tensions between Trump and the pope did not appear to derail Thursday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump is quite an expert at filling up a news cycle,\u201d Wenski said. \u201cThat\u2019s what he\u2019s done, and he continues to do it with great skill.\u201d<\/p>\n Wenski said diplomacy between the Vatican and the United States remains critical to providing aid in places in crisis like Cuba, where the Catholic Church has historically played a key role in distributing aid and easing tensions between Cuba and the U.S.<\/p>\n This story was produced with financial support<\/a> from Trish and Dan Bell and donors in South Florida\u2019s Jewish and Muslim communities, including Khalid and Diana Mirza and the Mohsin and Fauzia Jaffer Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.<\/p>\n
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