The Iran War Showed a New Side of Pope Leo
Catholics didn’t take long to conclude that Pope Leo XIV would be an unassuming leader. In contrast with the voluble Pope Francis, who clearly delighted in provoking controversy with off-the-cuff statements, Leo tended to speak in qualifiers—it seems; I suppose; at the moment—when he spoke at all. Nearly a year into his pontificate, he’s given just one extended on-the-record interview.
Leo’s reserve frustrated those who wanted to enlist the first American pope as the primary antagonist to the American president. He avoided such confrontation, perhaps recognizing that it could aggravate divisions in the politically diverse Catholic Church. The new pope prioritized unity, a principle he cited half a dozen times during his inaugural Mass, in implicit response to the discord that marked much of Francis’s time as pope. By all evidence, Leo was something entirely different from both Francis and Donald Trump: a quiet American, as I called him last summer.
That description is now obsolete.
As soon as the Iran war began, Leo was calling for its end. Advocating peace is hardly unusual for Leo, or any modern pope. But he has condemned the conflict with a fervor reminiscent of Francis, and has criticized President Trump with greater frequency and force than on any other issue, abandoning his earlier caution. Despite his continued emphasis on unity, Leo has not toned down his language, even as he’s drawn the ire of some on the Christian right.
The pope has ruled out the idea—asserted repeatedly by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—that America’s campaign in Iran enjoys divine favor. “Some even go so far as to invoke God’s name in these choices of death,” Leo said last month. “But God cannot be enlisted by darkness.”
Two weeks later, Leo elicited complaints from MAGA Christian leaders when he said that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” Franklin Graham disagreed, contending that “God does take sides in history.” Graham continued, “I don’t support war, but I do believe, at times, there is justification when you’re fighting evil.” The evangelical leader Tony Perkins was more blunt: “The Pope needs a history lesson.”
Leo’s latest rebuke of Trump came earlier this week, after the president warned Iran that its “whole civilization will die tonight.” In a statement to reporters, the pope said: “This truly is not acceptable.” He lauded the subsequent announcement of a two-week cease-fire, but reiterated his earlier appeal for a prayer vigil for peace at the Vatican, which recalled a similar gesture by Pope Francis in 2013 to oppose U.S. plans for military intervention in Syria.
So far, the Trump administration has not pushed back publicly on Leo’s comments about the war. But one can imagine what it might be saying in private based on a story this week from The Free Press. Elbridge Colby, a high-ranking Defense Department official, reportedly called the Vatican’s U.S. envoy to the Pentagon in January to discuss a speech the pope had recently given to foreign diplomats. Leo had warned that “a zeal for war is spreading” and that the norm prohibiting “nations from using force to violate the borders of others has been completely undermined.” The address came less than a week after the United States invaded Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro, and while Trump was insisting that he wanted to acquire Greenland.
According to The Free Press, Pentagon officials criticized Leo’s speech as a challenge to Trump’s foreign policy. At one point, the article states, a U.S. official mentioned the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century when the popes were subject to French royal influence. (The Pentagon has said this characterization of the meeting is “highly exaggerated and distorted,” instead calling it a “respectful and reasonable discussion.” The Vatican’s spokesperson issued a statement today saying that “the narrative offered by some media outlets about this meeting does not correspond to the truth in any way.”)
Although Leo wasn’t as outspoken before the war, he had been criticizing the administration’s policies for months, particularly on the issue of immigration. In the fall, he deplored the “inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States.” The pope later lamented that immigrants who had been living peacefully in the U.S. for decades were being treated “in a way that is, to say the least, extremely disrespectful, and with instances of violence.” His comments evidently irked the White House border czar, Tom Homan, who is Catholic. Homan said he wanted to tell the pope that, instead of criticizing Trump’s policies, “you ought to be fixing the Catholic Church, ’cause they’ve got their own issues.”
Then, in December, the day after Trump told Politico that European leaders were weak, Leo rebuked Trump’s attempt “to break apart what I think needs to be a very important alliance.” The following month, after the military operation in Venezuela, Leo issued a call to respect the country’s sovereignty and “the rule of law enshrined in its constitution.”
[Robert Kagan: America is now a rogue superpower]
Compared with these earlier remarks, though, the pope’s statements on the Iran war have found a wider audience, particularly in the U.S., where a growing number of liberals are commending him. Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed the pope’s Easter message, in which Leo warned: “We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent.” Two days later, Senator Cory Booker praised the pope’s “moral clarity,” and posted a video of Leo asking the world to “remember especially the innocent: children, the elderly, sick, so many people who have already become or will become victims of this continued warfare.”
Leo may not be Trump’s greatest opponent, as some of the president’s critics had hoped. But neither is he the quiet bystander that the president’s supporters might have wished him to be.