The CIA Director’s Grandson Just Threatened the Pope

GriftMatrix Intelligence Operations

The Pentagon invoked a medieval hostage crisis to silence the pope

So, the Pentagon summoned the Vatican’s ambassador to a meeting in January and it went about as well as you’d expect.

Elbridge Colby – he’s the Under Secretary of War for Policy, which, yes, they actually call it the Department of War now – sat across from Cardinal Christophe Pierre and basically told him that America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world and that the Catholic Church had better get on board. And when the cardinal pushed back, somebody in the room brought up the Avignon Papacy.

If you don’t remember that from history class, I didn’t either. The Avignon Papacy was a period starting in 1309 when France used military force to move the pope out of Rome and keep him under French control for 67 years. It’s what happens when a world power decides the pope is a political problem that needs solving.

That’s what a Pentagon official referenced. In a meeting with a cardinal. In 2026.

The Vatican was apparently so rattled by this that Pope Leo XIV – who is the first American pope, by the way – canceled his planned visit to the United States. JD Vance had invited him to attend the 250th anniversary of American independence on July 4. Instead, the pope is going to Lampedusa. That’s the tiny Italian island where migrants wash up from North Africa. It’s basically the global symbol of the refugee crisis.

So the first American-born pope is spending America’s birthday with migrants instead of Americans, cause America’s Pentagon told him to shut up about the war.

And look, that would be wild enough on its own. But I looked up Colby after I read about this meeting and it got so much weirder.

Elbridge Colby is the grandson of William Colby. William Colby was the Director of the CIA from 1973 to 1976. Before that, he spent the entire 1950s running covert operations out of Rome. He helped build the stay-behind networks of Operation Gladio, which used the Vatican as a key node. And according to declassified records, the CIA under the elder Colby planted microphones throughout the papal apartments to listen to the pope’s conversations.

The grandson of the guy who literally bugged the Vatican just threatened the current pope.

I mean – right?

And it’s not like the Pentagon is some neutral ground here. Pete Hegseth has been running monthly Christian prayer services broadcast on the Pentagon’s internal TV network since last May. The invitations have a cross on them. He brought in a pastor named Doug Wilson from Idaho who wants to repeal women’s right to vote, thinks homosexuality should be a crime, and openly advocates for a Christian theocracy. This guy led the Pentagon prayer service. On government television. In a government building.

Since the Iran war started, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has gotten over 110 complaints from more than 40 units across 30 military installations. Commanders are telling their troops that the war is God’s plan for Armageddon and that Trump was “anointed by Jesus” to start it. One combat-unit commander said it at a readiness briefing. For troops who could be deployed at any moment.

So the Pentagon is running evangelical worship services and telling troops the war is biblical prophecy. And the same Pentagon is threatening the head of the Catholic Church for criticizing the war. They don’t want Christianity. They want their specific version of it. Evangelical, nationalist, end-times. And the pope – the actual leader of the world’s biggest Christian denomination – just got told to fall in line or remember what happened seven hundred years ago.

The Pentagon said the reports were “highly exaggerated and distorted.” The Vatican hasn’t said anything publicly. But the pope’s travel schedule says everything. He’s not coming to America on the Fourth of July. He’s going to be with migrants on a rock in the Mediterranean.

That’s his answer. And honestly, it’s a pretty good one.

Sources