Pope Leo XIV called on world leaders to reject the temptation to use “powerful and sophisticated weapons,” as President Donald J. Trump aired the possibility of using massive bombs to destroy Iran’s Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant, located deep under a mountain.
“We must not get used to war,” the U.S.-born pope said in an appeal for peace at the end of his June 18 public audience, and warned against the descent to “barbarism.” He made his appeal as President Trump seemed to indicate that the United States might enter the war on the side of Israel if Iran did not agree to an “unconditional surrender.”
Hours after the pope spoke, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected Mr. Trump’s call for an “unconditional surrender,” adding to the fear of further escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. “Intelligent people who know Iran, the nation and the history of Iran will never speak to this nation in the language of threats, because the Iranian nation cannot be surrendered,” he said in a televised statement, adding that “the Americans should know that any U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage,” according a report in The New York Times.
Pope Leo’s remarks came as Israel and Iran traded missiles on the sixth day of a war that began early last Friday morning, when a surprise Israeli air campaign targeted nuclear sites and top military leadership with the aim of preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb. Israel is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, and is one of the only nine countries in the world to have such weapons; the others are the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, North Korea, India and Pakistan.
In recent weeks, the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency had warned that Iran had increased its enriched uranium production. On June 12, the I.A.E.A. declared that Iran was not in compliance with its nonproliferation obligations—the first time it has made such a declaration in close to two decades.
Iran, which says Israel’s strikes had also killed civilians, has retaliated with ballistic missile and drone attacks on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and central Israel.
[Related: Israel, Iran and the deadly results of abandoning international laws]
In the United States, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace urged Catholics and all people of goodwill “to ardently pray for an end to hostilities in the Middle East.”
“We urge the United States and the broader international community to exert every effort to renew a multilateral diplomatic engagement for the attainment of a durable peace between Israel and Iran,” Bishop A. Elias Zaidan, L.M., said in a June 16 statement. Bishop Zaidan was born in Lebanon and is the eparch of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles.
In his appeal today, Leo recalled that Pope Francis repeatedly said that “war is always a defeat,” and the Chicago-born pope reminded the thousands of Romans and pilgrims from many countries at the audience that Pope Pius XII said: “Nothing is lost with peace. Everything can be with war.” That quote from Pius XII was particularly significant given that the 20th-century pope said it in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War. Many people fear that a third world war could start in the Middle East if the Israel-Iran war is not stopped quickly.
Pope Leo said that “the temptation to have recourse to powerful and sophisticated weapons needs to be rejected.”
Quoting Vatican II’s pastoral constitution “Gaudium et Spes,” the pope said that when “every kind of weapon produced by modern science is used in war, the savagery of war threatens to lead the combatants to barbarities far surpassing those of former ages” (No. 79).
“The heart of the church is torn by the cries that rise from the places of war, in particular from Ukraine, Iran, Israel, Gaza,” Pope Leo said. Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, killing some 70,000 people and forcing millions to leave their homes and seek refuge in other countries. Since the start of that war, Russia has used increasingly powerful weapons—including hypersonic missiles—against this smaller nation, and has threatened to use nuclear weapons, too.
Israel launched its war against Gaza after the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 Israelis and captured around 250 hostages. In the more than 500 days of war, Israel has killed more than 55,000 of the 2.1 million Palestinians living there, including more than 16,000 children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and much of the Gaza Strip has been reduced to ruins. After more than two months of a near-total blockade on humanitarian aid entering the Strip, Israel established food distribution centers, run by American security contractors, that have been plagued by chaos and violence.
The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution on June 12 demanding that Israel “immediately end the blockade in Gaza, open all border crossings and ensure that aid reaches the Palestinian civilian population throughout the Gaza Strip.” It passed with 149 votes in favor, 12 against and 19 abstentions. Among those voting against were the United States and Israel, joined by Argentina, Hungary and Paraguay, among others.
On June 17, Israeli tanks fired into a crowd trying to get aid from trucks in Gaza, killing at least 59 people, as reported by Reuters. It was “one of the bloodiest incidents yet in mounting violence as desperate residents struggle for food,” the agency said.
Father Gabriel Romanelli, the pastor of Holy Family Church, the only Catholic parish in the Gaza Strip, warned that the suffering of the Palestinians in the enclave is being forgotten.
“Imagine a city like Rome (which has a population slightly larger than that of Gaza), whose inhabitants are forced to collect food in three or four distribution points located in different areas, with all that this entails in terms of hardship and danger. What we see today in Gaza is shameful,” Father Romanelli told SIR, the news agency of the Italian bishops’ conference.
Material from OSV News was used in this report.
