Rome
On Tuesday night time at a windy Castel Gandolfo, I requested Pope Leo XIV a query. With war doubtlessly escalating in the Middle East, I needed to know if he had a message for President Donald Trump and different leaders of the United States and Israel.
His reply was telling. The first American pope spoke in English and stated he hoped Trump would discover an “off-ramp” to finish the war with Iran. He known as for an finish to the violence and for leaders to barter.
It’s uncommon for popes to quote world leaders by identify, and this is one of the primary instances Leo has cited Trump publicly. His reply pointed to how the war is weighing closely on him, and he spoke in a language that might be heard and understood in the White House.
It additionally threw into sharp distinction the distinction between the 2 most seen US leaders on the world stage proper now. On one aspect, Pope Leo, the Chicago-born Augustinian friar, referred to as a mild and reserved character who doesn’t search the highlight. On the opposite, President Trump an nearly omnipresent determine in the information agenda and disruptor of international politics.
While Leo is not a confrontational pope, he is more and more talking out concerning the US-Israeli war with Iran. And he’s doing in order Pete Hegseth, the US protection secretary, frames the war effort as divinely supported, even utilizing scriptural justification.
Leo has pushed back towards this concept. “Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” he stated on Palm Sunday at the beginning of Holy Week. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war but rejects them.” Like Hegseth, Leo additionally quoted scripture, however in his case it was to say that those that wage war have fingers “full of blood.”
Marcello Neri, an Italian theologian and thinker, put it this manner in an article for the Appia Institute: “It is clear that the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church strongly opposes Mr. Hegseth’s logic of violence justified in the name of God.”
Behind this pope’s mild-mannered exterior lies a steely dedication. On Tuesday night time, when he got here out to speak to reporters after a day at the papal retreat simply exterior Rome, he needed to ship a message and known as for an “Easter truce.” Increasingly, Leo is rising as a number one voice to finish wars, and on Good Friday he continued his Holy Week push for peace by holding separate cellphone calls with the presidents of Israel and Ukraine.
“The cascading global destructiveness of this war points to the illusions which led us to attack Iran; and for disciples of the Prince of Peace this destructiveness and cycle of illusions have only one imperative: to end this conflict now,” Cardinal Robert McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, DC, informed NCS in response to Leo’s Palm Sunday remarks. “I think Pope Leo is saying we should be wary of triumphalistically assuming that God is on our side even in a war that is morally illegitimate.”
McElroy, the creator of a doctoral thesis on ethical norms in US overseas coverage, doesn’t imagine the war in Iran complies with Catholic educating on a “just war,” which units out standards for a morally justified battle. Timothy Broglio, the US archbishop for the navy companies, agrees. He informed CBS in an interview to be aired on Easter Sunday that whereas Iran posed “a threat with nuclear arms, it’s compensating for a threat before the threat is actually realized.”
Leo’s first Holy Week and Easter since his election final May takes place towards the backdrop of war. In that point, the brand new pope has been taking time to regulate to a job that has thrust him into the highlight and to a place he by no means anticipated. The typical knowledge was that no American might be elected pope whereas the US remained the world’s dominant energy.
But the church’s 2025 conclave after the dying of Pope Francis broke the development by selecting Cardinal Robert Prevost to switch him. At a time of uncertainty over America’s function in the world, the church turned to a prelate whose 20 years in Peru made him a determine with worldwide expertise although one not overly related to the United States.
Leo’s election has echoes of that of Pope John Paul II, the primary non-Italian to be chosen in 450 years and the primary from Poland, who grew to become pontiff at the peak of the Cold War in 1978. Some see parallels between John Paul II’s opposition to the 2003 war in Iraq and what Leo is saying on Iran.
“The last time a Roman pontiff inveighed so urgently against a war, it was Saint John Paul II in the leadup to Iraq,” stated Sohrab Ahmari, the conservative Iranian American columnist and creator, who transformed to Catholicism in 2016. Ahmari informed NCS that, as in the time of John Paul II, the pope’s warnings are being ignored whereas some Catholic supporters of Trump “obfuscate” Leo’s educating or oppose it. Ahmari described the war as “manifestly unjust.”
At age 70, Leo has time on his aspect, and his papacy is prone to outlast the present US administration. As the primary anniversary of his election approaches, he is rising as a mild however agency voice in turbulent instances.