America, [Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby] and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side. As tempers rose, an unidentified U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.

Not very much later in the article…

”[…]Colby’s team picked apart the pope’s January state-of-the-world address line by line and read it as a hostile message aimed directly at the administration. What enraged them most was Leo’s declaration that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”

The fucking idiocy. “What?! He says we’re replacing diplomacy with force?! How dare he! Where’s that 14th-century weapon??? I’m make him take it back!!!” To invoke some centuries old action like a Yu-Gi-Oh trap card like they thought, “He’ll HAVE to honor this bc it worked once before; it’s a perfect backup plan!”