US Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a substantial address on the central place of the Catholic faith in the history and identity of the United States, portraying the nation as a place where the Church and the Christian civilisation it shaped experienced a profound rebirth. His speech was delivered in the wake of his meeting with Pope Leo XIV, and amid lingering concerns about anti-Catholic prejudice in American institutions such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Speaking virtually at the symposium “Endowed by Their Creator: Catholicism, the Declaration of Independence, and the American Experiment at 250”, organised ahead of the United States’ semiquincentennial, Secretary Rubio opened by quoting Pope Leo XIII’s 1895 encyclical on the United States, Longinqua Oceani. He cited the pontiff’s words: “All intelligent men are agreed that America seems destined for greater things. Now it is our wish that the Catholic Church should not only share in but help bring about this prospect of greatness.”
