Italian PM Meloni meets with Pontiff (Vatican Press Office)

Pope Leo XIV received Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in a July 2 audience—a meeting that Meloni afterwards described as “a pleasure and an honor.”

Following the audience, Meloni met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of His Holiness, and Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations.

The parties, according to the Holy See Press Office, discussed “the good existing relations between the Holy See and Italy,” as well as “the joint commitment to peace in Ukraine and the Middle East, and humanitarian aid in Gaza.”

Italy, a Southern European nation of 61.0 million (map), is 75% Christian (71% Catholic) and 6% Muslim.