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  "path": "/2026/04/whiskey-tango-foxtrot.html",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-09T00:36:00.001Z",
  "site": "https://40yrs.blogspot.com",
  "tags": [
    "summoned to the Pentagon and the Pope and the Church were threatened",
    "The Free Press"
  ],
  "textContent": "It comes as no secret that Pope Leo is not a fan of Trump and Netanyahu's war against Iran.\n\nAfter Leo XIV gave an anti-war \"State of the World\" speech, Apostolic Nuncio Cardinal Christophe Pierre was summoned to the Pentagon and the Pope and the Church were threatened.\n\nIf we are looking for signs of the apocalypse, I think that they found one.\n\n> Relations between the U.S. and the Catholic Church have not been the same since January, when senior U.S. defense officials shared an abrasive message with a Vatican official.\n>\n> Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.\n>\n> “The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”\n\nAn important note here, the  _Free Press_ , formerly  _Common Sense_ , is a propaganda rag founded by Bari Weiss, and as such I would not take anything that they write at face value, but I am quoting the  _New Republic_ , which has been a reliable source of news ever since Marty Peretz got dumped.\n\n> One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France.\n\nCredit where credit is due, someone knows their European history.\n\nIt appears that the threats were so blatant that the Pope canceled his planned visit to the United States,\n\n> ………\n>\n> But the blatant intimidation tactic is the first of its kind ever made by American officials to the Catholic Church. There are no public records of any previous meetings between Vatican and U.S. officials at the Pentagon, let alone an instance in which the world power suggested that it could force the Bishop of Rome into captivity.\n>\n> The Vatican was so alarmed by the Pentagon’s warning that Pope Leo cancelled his plans to visit the U.S. later in the year, reported Hale, who noted that “many in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.”\n\nThis is f%$#ed up and sh%$.",
  "title": "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-09T05:58:11.865Z"
}