Not in God’s name: How Pope Leo is pushing back on divine justification of war

Rome — 

On Tuesday night at a windy Castel Gandolfo, I asked Pope Leo XIV a question. With war potentially escalating in the Middle East, I wanted to know if he had a message for President Donald Trump and other leaders of the United States and Israel.

His answer was telling. The first American pope spoke in English and said he hoped Trump would find an “off-ramp” to end the war with Iran. He called for an end to the violence and for leaders to negotiate.

It’s rare for popes to cite world leaders by name, and this is one of the first times Leo has cited Trump publicly. His answer pointed to how the war is weighing heavily on him, and he spoke in a language that would be heard and understood in the White House.

It also threw into sharp contrast the difference between the two most visible US leaders on the world stage right now. On one side, Pope Leo, the Chicago-born Augustinian friar, known as a gentle and reserved character who does not seek the spotlight. On the other, President Trump an almost omnipresent figure in the news agenda and disruptor of global politics.

While Leo is not a confrontational pope, he is increasingly speaking out about the US-Israeli war with Iran. And he’s doing so as Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, frames the war effort as divinely supported, even using scriptural justification.

Leo has pushed back against this idea. “Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” he said on Palm Sunday at the start of Holy Week. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war but rejects them.” Like Hegseth, Leo also quoted scripture, but in his case it was to say that those who wage war have hands “full of blood.”

Marcello Neri, an Italian theologian and philosopher, put it this way 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 determination. On Tuesday night, when he came out to talk to reporters after a day at the papal retreat just outside Rome, he wanted to send a message and called for an “Easter truce.” Increasingly, Leo is emerging as a leading voice to end wars, and on Good Friday he continued his Holy Week push for peace by holding separate phone 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, told CNN 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 author of a doctoral thesis on moral norms in US foreign policy, does not believe the war in Iran complies with Catholic teaching on a “just war,” which sets out criteria for a morally justified conflict. Timothy Broglio, the US archbishop for the military services, agrees. He told CBS in an interview to be aired on Easter Sunday that while 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 last May takes place against the backdrop of war. In that time, the new pope has been taking time to adjust to a role that has thrust him into the spotlight and to a position he never expected. The conventional wisdom was that no American could be elected pope while the US remained the world’s dominant power.

But the church’s 2025 conclave after the death of Pope Francis broke the trend by choosing Cardinal Robert Prevost to replace him. At a time of uncertainty over America’s role in the world, the church turned to a prelate whose two decades in Peru made him a figure with international experience though one not overly associated with the United States.

Leo’s election has echoes of that of Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian to be chosen in 450 years and the first from Poland, who became pontiff at the height 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,” said Sohrab Ahmari, the conservative Iranian American columnist and author, who converted to Catholicism in 2016. Ahmari told CNN that, as in the time of John Paul II, the pope’s warnings are being ignored while some Catholic supporters of Trump “obfuscate” Leo’s teaching or oppose it. Ahmari described the war as “manifestly unjust.”

At age 70, Leo has time on his side, and his papacy is likely to outlast the current US administration. As the first anniversary of his election approaches, he is emerging as a gentle but firm voice in turbulent times.