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Italian PM Condemns ‘Unacceptable’ Trump Criticism of Pope

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni gestures in the Senate chamber during the briefing to Parliament on the government's activities in Rome, Italy, 09 April 2026. (EPA)
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni gestures in the Senate chamber during the briefing to Parliament on the government's activities in Rome, Italy, 09 April 2026. (EPA)
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Italian PM Condemns ‘Unacceptable’ Trump Criticism of Pope

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni gestures in the Senate chamber during the briefing to Parliament on the government's activities in Rome, Italy, 09 April 2026. (EPA)
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni gestures in the Senate chamber during the briefing to Parliament on the government's activities in Rome, Italy, 09 April 2026. (EPA)

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Monday condemned US President Donald Trump's criticism of Pope Leo XIV as "unacceptable", after the US pontiff spoke out against the Middle East war.

"The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and normal for him to call for peace and to condemn all forms of war," she said in a statement.

It represents a rare rebuke of Trump by Meloni, a far-right leader who has sought to be a bridge between the conservative US president and European leaders.

Meloni earlier put out a statement supporting Pope Leo's efforts at peace and reconciliation in a trip to Africa, which began Monday, just hours after Trump launched a scathing criticism of the first US pontiff.

"I thought the meaning of my statement this morning was clear, but I will restate it more explicitly. I find President Trump's words about the Holy Father unacceptable," she said.

Speaking to reporters late Sunday, Trump said he was "not a big fan of Pope Leo", accusing the pontiff of "toying with a country (Iran) that wants a nuclear weapon".

The president later doubled down on his comments with a post on Truth Social, saying: "I don't want a Pope who thinks it's OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon."

"Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy," he said.

His comments drew outrage from many Italian politicians, while Catholic bishops from the United States and Italy were quick to defend the pontiff.

Leo himself told reporters on the plane to Algeria -- the first stop on a four-nation tour that also takes in Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea -- that he had a "moral duty" to speak out against war.

"I have no fear, neither of the Trump administration, nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel," he said.

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Middle East Ceasefire a ‘Priority’, China’s FM Tells Pakistan

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi waves after a press conference on the sidelines of the National People's Congress (NPC), in Beijing, China, March 8, 2026. (Reuters)
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi waves after a press conference on the sidelines of the National People's Congress (NPC), in Beijing, China, March 8, 2026. (Reuters)
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Middle East Ceasefire a ‘Priority’, China’s FM Tells Pakistan

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi waves after a press conference on the sidelines of the National People's Congress (NPC), in Beijing, China, March 8, 2026. (Reuters)
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi waves after a press conference on the sidelines of the National People's Congress (NPC), in Beijing, China, March 8, 2026. (Reuters)

Maintaining a ceasefire in the Middle East war is an "immediate priority" for resolving the conflict, China's top diplomat told his Pakistan counterpart in a phone call on Monday.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also said on Monday that the ceasefire between the United States and Iran was "holding" and that efforts were underway to reach an agreement after talks in Islamabad at the weekend failed to do so.

"The immediate priority is to make every effort toward preventing the resumption of hostilities and to maintain the hard-won ceasefire momentum," Wang Yi told Pakistan's Ishaq Dar, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.

Wang said a joint peace plan by China and Pakistan announced last month as the two officials met in Beijing "still can serve as a direction for efforts toward a resolution".

World

UN Maritime Chief Says No Country Has Right to Close Hormuz

FILE PHOTO: Cargo ships in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from northern Ras al-Khaimah, near the border with Oman’s Musandam governance, March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Cargo ships in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from northern Ras al-Khaimah, near the border with Oman’s Musandam governance, March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
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UN Maritime Chief Says No Country Has Right to Close Hormuz

FILE PHOTO: Cargo ships in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from northern Ras al-Khaimah, near the border with Oman’s Musandam governance, March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Cargo ships in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from northern Ras al-Khaimah, near the border with Oman’s Musandam governance, March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

The head of the UN maritime agency said Monday no country had a legal right to block shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a trade passage paralysed by the US-Iran war.

The International Maritime Organization's Secretary General Arsenio Dominguez addressed a news conference as access to the strait remained blocked six weeks after the war erupted with US and Israeli strikes against Iran.

The United States had threatened to begin a blockade on Monday of Iranian ports in and around the strait, which Tehran's forces have been controlling access to since after the war broke out on February 28.

"In accordance to international law, no countries have the right to prohibit the right of innocent passage or the freedom of navigation through international straits that are used for international transit," Dominguez said.

Iranian authorities have been allowing a trickle of vetted vessels to pass the strait through a route close to their coast and in some cases have reportedly levied a payment to let vessels through.

"This principle of introducing a toll on an international strait for international navigation is against the international law of the sea and the customary law," Dominguez said.

"It will create a very dangerous precedent."

The US vow to blockade Iranian ports meanwhile "doesn't make it any easier", he added.

"De-escalation is what is going to start helping us to address the crisis and to bring shipping back to the way that we used to operate."

He predicted that the extra impact of a US blockade on shipping would be negligible, however.

"With the very few number of ships that have managed to transit, an additional blockade is not going to exacerbate the situation in a level that it could be perceived."

World

NATO Allies Refuse to Join Trump's Strait of Hormuz Blockade

FILE PHOTO: A NATO flag flutters at the Tapa military base, Estonia April 30, 2023. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A NATO flag flutters at the Tapa military base, Estonia April 30, 2023. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo
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NATO Allies Refuse to Join Trump's Strait of Hormuz Blockade

FILE PHOTO: A NATO flag flutters at the Tapa military base, Estonia April 30, 2023. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A NATO flag flutters at the Tapa military base, Estonia April 30, 2023. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo

The United States' NATO allies said on Monday they would not get involved in President Donald Trump's plan to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, further ratcheting up tensions within the increasingly fragile alliance. Trump said the US military would work with other countries to block all maritime traffic in the waterway, after weekend talks failed to reach an agreement to end the six-week conflict with Iran. The US military later specified that the blockade, due to start at 1400 GMT on Monday, would only apply to ships going to or from Iranian ports.

"The Blockade will begin shortly. Other Countries will be involved with this Blockade," Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Sunday.

But NATO allies including Britain and France said they would not be drawn into the conflict by taking part in the blockade, saying instead that it was vital to open the waterway through which one-fifth of the world's oil usually passes, which Iran has effectively closed since the conflict began on February 28. Their refusal to participate is yet another point of friction with Trump, who has threatened to withdraw from the military alliance and is weighing pulling some US troops from Europe after several countries resisted supporting the US campaign against Iran by denying US military planes use of their airspace.

CONSIDERABLE PRESSURE

"We're not supporting the blockade," British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the BBC.

"My decision has been very clearly that whatever the pressure, and there's been some considerable pressure, we're not getting dragged into the war," he said. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told European governments that Trump wants concrete commitments in the near future to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, diplomats told Reuters last week.

NATO could play a role in the strait if its 32 members could agree on the formation of a mission, Rutte said on April 9.

Several European countries have said they're willing to help in the strait but only once there is a durable end to hostilities and an agreement with Iran that their ships will not be attacked.

France will organize a conference with Britain and other countries to create a multinational mission to restore navigation in the strait, French President Emmanuel Macron said on X on Monday.

"This strictly defensive mission, distinct from the belligerents, will be deployed as soon as the situation allows," Macron said.

Britain is working on ways to reduce insurance premiums for ships passing through the strait once the fighting has stopped, according to a senior European official.

The Strait of Hormuz should be reopened by diplomacy, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Monday, adding that creating an international force to oversee it would be complicated as he called for NATO to reset its ties with Trump at a summit in Ankara in July.