Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s attempt at Vatican gift diplomacy went awry on Thursday.
Rubio traveled to the Vatican in an apparent bid to build bridges amid Donald Trump’s war of words with Pope Leo XIV over the pontiff’s criticism of the president’s war on Iran and crackdown on immigrants.
The pope gave Rubio a pen made of olive wood, in what some commenters suggested was a symbolic peace offering.
“Olive, being of course the plant of peace,” Leo said.
Rubio, however, presented Leo with a … crystal football.
“I know you’re a baseball guy,” Rubio said in a reference to Chicago-born Leo’s love of the Chicago White Sox.
“But I mean, it has the seal of the State Department,” Rubio continued. “What to get someone who has everything, I thought, ‘Oh, a crystal…’”
The exchange soon went viral on social media.
Menswear writer Derek Guy sarcastically wrote on X: “This is really heartwarming. two men exchanging symbolic tokens of things the other has no interest in (football, peace).”
Others suggested “Rubio picked that Football up in the White House gift shop on his way to the airport for $30,” it was “something you buy at the airport as a last minute gift” or that he “just hastily grabbed some shit off his desk.”
“Rubio is so utterly ignorant. An Augustinian friar is a guy who has everything?” added another.
One person even responded with an AI-generated video of the pope throwing the football at a wall, where it shattered into a million pieces.