NEW: Vatican Officially Crushes Dems’ Narrative, Debunks Fake News Of Pentagon ‘Threat’

The Pentagon and the Vatican are swatting down a report claiming a U.S. defense official threatened the Holy See during a late-January meeting, calling the story fiction and warning that the sensational framing is designed to stir division. The controversy centers on a Jan. 22 meeting at the Pentagon between Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy office head, and Cardinal Christophe Pierre, then the Vatican’s top diplomat to the United States. The Free Press reported Monday, citing unnamed sources, that Colby warned Pierre the U.S. military has the “power to do whatever it wants, and that the Church had better take its side,” and that a U.S. official invoked the “Avignon Papacy,” a reference to the 1309-1376 period when popes resided in Avignon rather than Rome. The Pentagon rejected that a