Mattia Ferraresi is a journalist, a contributor to Domani and various American publications. Let’s start with your scoop, which revealed the tension between the Trump administration and the Vatican and triggered the clash between Trump and Pope Leo. What happened in that unusual meeting at the Pentagon that you reconstructed for the newspaper The Free Press?
On January 22, the apostolic nuncio to the United States, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, was invited to the Pentagon. The fact that a diplomatic-type meeting took place at the Pentagon is unprecedented, and it is perhaps even more important than what the two delegations said to each other.
The meeting was led by the undersecretary for policy of the War Department, as it has been nicknamed: his name is Elbridge Colby, he is a man of absolute trust of Vice President J.D. Vance and is himself a Catholic, like many of those Vance has placed at the Pentagon.
There was certainly an incredibly tense and above all absolutely unusual meeting, given that the Vatican is naturally not a military power and only has the weapons of diplomacy.
What reactions were there to the publication of your article?
The Pentagon and the Holy See had to first admit the existence of this meeting. They then published photographs and initially tried to contest the interpretation given, saying it was a routine meeting with cordial tones.
Then, as days passed and the case escalated, the denials became slightly sharper. It reached, indeed in a very strange way, Cardinal Pierre who, through the American ambassador to the Holy See, apparently said it was a false reconstruction.
But no one addressed the substance of the reconstruction I made. Simply, as is customary in these diplomatic cases, they denied essentially while confirming the circumstance.
Trump launched an unprecedented attack on the Pope and this creates a problem for a MAGA world that includes many important figures who identify as Catholics, from Vice President J.D. Vance to the inspirer of Project 2025 Kevin Roberts.
Yes, certainly the direct and frontal attack on the Pope is something for which, to find a similar precedent, one probably has to go back to Napoleon. It creates many problems within the MAGA base, which also consists of an important and significant Catholic world that has convincingly supported and continues to support the president.
Of course, there are also fundamental top figures who are Catholic. Trump, however, is a specialist in this game: pitting his subordinates against each other, watching them fight, exactly as he watches mixed martial arts in the matches he likes so much.
In this case, the first most evident effect is putting J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio in a very difficult, if not impossible, position—two fundamental figures of his administration but also the main candidates for his succession in 2028.
What could be the consequences of this split between Trump and the Vatican on the American right?
There are many theological-political conflicts overlapping in this crisis, concerning both the relationship between Protestants and Catholics, and that within the perimeter of Catholicism itself.
But there is one curious thing I would like to highlight. Pope Leo is, in a certain sense, carrying forward some—not all, but some—of the fundamental issues that Trump proposed and with which he won and convinced the electorate.
I am talking about the American disengagement in foreign policy, which was one of the pillars of the MAGA foreign policy proposal, and a fundamental attention to the most fragile, marginalized people.
Trump became what he became because of the appeal to the working class and forgotten people, who were also fundamentally personified by men, the Appalachian hillbillies, of whom Vance was the chronicler.
Certainly, on some things we are very far apart, and I refer in particular to immigration. But then obviously we think instead of ethical-social issues: abortion, euthanasia, end-of-life issues, the family issue.
In a certain sense, it can be said that the original MAGA politics that Trump proposed largely tends to coincide with the battles for which Pope Leo has been campaigning in recent months.
(Excerpt from Appunti)
