Pope Leo XIV is refusing to soften his criticism of Donald Trump’s war with Iran.
“God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs,” Leo wrote Friday morning on X. “Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.”
Leo, a Chicago native and the first American pope in the 2000-year history of the Catholic Church, has been a vocal critic of the conflict in the Middle East since the United States and Israel began attacking Iran in February. Leo’s social media post on Friday appear to be at least partially in response to the Trump administration repeatedly invoking God as it carries out Operation Epic Fury.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in particular, has been framing the conflict as a holy war being waged “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
In a Wednesday press conference, Hegseth — a former Fox News host who boasts not one, but two, crusade-themed tattoos — told reporters of the supposed ceasefire: “God deserves all the glory. Tens of thousands of strikes carried out under the protection of divine providence. A massive effort with miraculous protection. God is good.”
The Pope also wrote on Friday: “Absurd and inhuman violence is spreading ferociously through the sacred places of the Christian East. Profaned by the blasphemy of war and the brutality of business, with no regard for people’s lives, which are considered at most collateral damage of self-interest.”
“No gain can be worth the life of the weakest, children, or families. No cause can justify the shedding of innocent blood,” he added.
Leo has been a vocal counter to his home nation’s Christian Nationalist war mongering. The Pentagon has reportedly not been happy about it.
On Monday, The Free Press reported that in January — as Leo’s indirect criticisms of the Trump administration became more forceful and drew more headlines — the Pentagon called in former Holy See American Ambassador Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who retired in March, into a meeting. There they warned the cardinal that the American military had the “power to do whatever it wants — and that the Church had better take its side.” Sources told The Free Press that Defense Department officials at one point invoked the Avignon Papacy, a 67-year period in the 14th Century during which the papacy was effectively held hostage under French control in the city of Avignon – not Rome. The Avignon Papacy began with the kidnapping and death of Pope Boniface VIII after long periods of political conflict with King Philip IV of France. Following Boniface’s death, Philip forced the election of a French pontiff amenable to his political ambitions, and kept the papal court in his own backyard. The papacy would remain under French control through seven popes before returning to Rome under Pope Gregory XI. A Frenchman has never again been raised to the papacy.
It’s a heavy historical threat to level against representatives for the Vatican, especially after the historic election of an American pope. The Pentagon and the White House have denied the report, and the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See has said that Cardinal Pierre also denied the media’s portrayal of the January meeting..
Leo’s posts on Friday come days after he wrote on Easter that “death is always lurking. We see it in violence, in the wounds of the world, in the cry of pain that rises from every corner because of the abuses that crush the weakest among us, because of the idolatry of profit that plunders the earth’s resources, because of the violence of war that kills and destroys.”
Days after Hegseth berated reporters in March for not giving the war enough positive coverage, Leo wrote that it is “every journalist’s duty to verify the news, so as not to become a megaphone for power. They must show the suffering that war always brings to populations, which entails showing the face of war and recounting it through the eyes of victims.”
Tensions between the Vatican and the Trump administration have grown so much that Leo reportedly canceled a planned visit to the United States this summer, and may avoid trips to the nation of his birth so long as Trump remains in office.
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