The Pentagon has denied threatening the Vatican during a late January meeting with the Holy See’s then-envoy to the U.S., as Pope Leo XIV has warned against the growing use of military action in recent months.
The Pentagon’s policy office head, Elbridge Colby, met with Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s former diplomat to the U.S., on Jan. 22 at the Pentagon, during which he warned the then-envoy that the U.S. military has the “power to do whatever it wants — and that the Church had better take its side,” The Free Press reported Monday.
The outlet, citing unnamed sources, reported that a U.S. official raised the threat of the “Avignon Papacy,” referencing the period from 1309 to 1376, when France’s King Philip IV captured the Pope and subsequent popes resided in Avignon instead of Rome.
The Pentagon slammed the report as “grossly false and distorted,” saying that Colby had a “substantive, respectful and professional” meeting with Pierre and his team.
The Pentagon is obstructing reporters and defying an earlier court order that required it to restore access to credentialed journalists covering the Department of Defense (DOD), a U.S. judge in Washington ruled Thursday — a blow to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempts to limit media access.
Pete Hegseth and the Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has reached new heights with the Defense secretary’s purge of senior Army officials last week.
First lady Melania Trump made a statement at the White House on Thursday to slam reports about any connections she may have had with Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
A prominent Palestinian children's rights charity has shut down its operations after decades of documenting violations against Palestinian children, blaming sustained Israeli pressure and restrictions.
Questionnaires of children forcibly taken from a Kherson orphanage have been found on a Russian state adoption portal, according to Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament commissioner for human rights.
The Red Cross said it was “outraged by the devastating death and destruction” in densely populated areas across Lebanon as Israel launched a massive wave of attacks on Wednesday.
The black S.U.V. carrying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House just before 11 a.m. on Feb. 11. The Israeli leader, who had been pressing for months for the United States to agree to a major assault on Iran, was whisked inside with little ceremony, out of view of reporters, primed for one of the most high-stakes moments in his long career.
The California supreme court on Wednesday ordered a county sheriff and gubernatorial candidate who seized more than half a million 2025 election ballots to pause his investigation into election fraud allegations while the judges review the legal challenge against it.
