A convert to MAGA and a two-time “revert” to the Catholic Church, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a trip to Italy and the Vatican this week and has an opportunity to set the record straight about Iran and world events to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Pope Leo. Both world leaders were sold to Americans as “conservatives,” but they are anything but that.

Meloni was said to be an ally of President Trump, but she denied America the use of a military base on Italian soil for the attack on Iran. Pope Leo was described by scholar Paul Kengor as a “conservative Republican” – a complete distortion of his record in Chicago.

Regarding Leo, many Catholics wanted to believe the best about him, thinking he represented a departure from the left-wing views of Jesuit Pope Francis. Instead, his since-deleted social media posts have resurfaced, prompting fresh concern that, in the words of the song “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” the new boss is the same as the old boss.

That old boss, Francis, was an anti-Trump figure who had publicly prayed that the sentences of inmates on death row in the United States would be commuted or changed. It was a display of mercy for saving the lives of child killers, a rapist, and a drug kingpin from lawful execution.

Leo’s defenders are trying to obscure his real background. Back on May 8, 2025, Sarah D. Wire and Francesca Chambers of USA Today noted that Leo’s social media presence “shared items critical of Trump and Vance policies.” By contrast, the pope’s own brother, Louis Prevost, is a Trump supporter.

“The cardinals elected the wrong one,” said one observer of the two brothers.

Leo, or Robert Prevost, had tweeted the following:

• He criticized JD Vance's interpretation of Catholic social teaching.

• He criticized president Trump's immigration policies.

• He urged the Trump Administration to read Pope Francis’s alarmist environmental encyclical Laudato Si,’ about the alleged dangers of climate change.

• He called for an end to the death penalty.

• He promoted COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr. Paul Kengor’s new book, American Pontiff: Pope Leo XIV and His Plan to Heal the Church, claims that Leo is a Republican, citing voting records from his home state of Illinois in 2012, 2014, and 2016. However, he acknowledges that Leo did not vote in the 2016 general election, when Trump was running as the Republican presidential candidate against Democrat Hillary Clinton. That was a clear signal that Leo was a liberal Republican, or what many call a RINO, a Republican in Name Only.

The College of Cardinals, which picked Leo, has a majority that was selected by Pope Francis, who emerged as a major leader of the Global Left.

Americans were led to believe by the media that there was some mystery to the selection of Leo, and the betting markets were misled as well, putting money on an Italian to get the job.

What we should have been told, in advance, was that he had to get the approval of the secretive Lavender or Gay Mafia in the Roman Catholic Church. This network dwarfs that of Jeffrey Epstein. Important Catholic figures have called this evidence of “powers of darkness“ in the Vatican.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) says Leo failed to act on reports of child sex abuse in his diocese. One group of victims released new evidence showing Leo as pope “wielded his new papal authority to avoid testifying about his involvement in covering up child sex abuse in Peru,” where he was a missionary.

Robert Prevost is supposedly the first American pope but he did not say a word in English when he made his first appearance and accepted the nod. It was a deliberate snub to the home of his birth and – by extension President Donald J. Trump. Instead, he spoke in Italian, and then Spanish, having served the church in Peru for 20 years, even acquiring Peruvian citizenship in 2015.

Although he invoked the name of Mary, the Mother of God, he made no mention of Fatima, the place where in 1917 Catholics believe the Virgin Mary appeared to three children in a vision, followed by the Miracle of the Sun, to call for the Vatican to consecrate communist Russia to avoid “errors” from that country which would devastate the world. Russia’s wars of aggression, including the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, have accelerated, even as Trump pleads for cease-fires.

As a result, according to what the church itself believes, Russia and China will continue to wage war on the West, including by using proxies like the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Church abandoned anti-communism after the Russians tried to kill Pope John Paul II for working with President Reagan to oppose Soviet Russia. On the anniversary of Fatima, the Soviets carried out the May 13, 1981, attempted assassination of anti-communist Pope John Paul II using a Turkish stooge.

Francis got the message but failed to carry out the consecration of Russia, as requested by the Virgin Mary at Fatima. He also cozied up to Vladimir Putin and his KGB-controlled Russian Orthodox Church and made a secret deal with Communist China to pick church officials there.

Meanwhile, there are reportedly several exorcisms being conducted in the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington at the current time, but the church doesn’t speak publicly about them. Instead, Leo reportedly held a private audience with the International Association of Exorcists (IAE) at the Vatican and was asked to guarantee that every diocese in the world has “one or more” trained exorcist priests.

There is no record of Leo responding publicly to this request.

EWTN reported that during the half-hour meeting, the AIE presented the pope with a detailed report warning of a “painful and increasingly widespread situation of people seriously affected by the extraordinary action of the devil as a result of their involvement in occult sects.”

Perhaps the Vatican needs an exorcism.

A similar black-out concerns reports of Eucharistic miracles, in which the communion host is found to contain human muscle tissue from a heart and even blood. But ordinary Catholics are speaking out. A special exhibit at one church showcased more than 60 such Eucharistic miracles documented over centuries and a book examines the phenomenon.

But rather than emphasize the spiritual nature of Christianity and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the new pope emerges as a political voice, a RINO, leaving traditional Catholics no choice but to cease contributions.

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• Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org