Pope Leo Condemns "Atrocious Violence" of War On Iran, Calling on Leaders Who Launched the War to Heed His Ceasefire Demand
“On behalf of Christians in the Middle East and of all women and men of good will, I appeal to those responsible for this conflict: Cease fire!” Leo told thousands gathered in St. Peter's Square.
This story has been updated.
By Gary Gately
Pope Leo XIV on Sunday condemned the “atrocious violence” of the U.S.-Israeli-led war against Iran and, for the first time, called on leaders who launched the war to heed his ceasefire demand.
“On behalf of Christians in the Middle East and of all women and men of good will, I appeal to those responsible for this conflict: Cease fire!” the first U.S.-born pontiff told thousands of the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his Angelus address. “Cease fire so that avenues for dialogue may be reopened. Violence can never lead to the justice, stability, and peace that the people are waiting for.”
Pope Leo’s comments came as the death toll in the war that has spiraled across a dozen Middle Eastern countries climbed to more than 2,000, nearly three-quarters of them in Iran. Throughout the Mideast, more than 13,000 have been injured and an estimated 4 million displaced.
Speaking Sunday from the window of his study in the Apostolic Palace, the leader of the 1.4 billion-member Catholic Church said: “Thousands of innocent people have been killed, and countless others have been forced to flee their homes. I renew my prayerful closeness to all who have lost loved ones in the attacks, which have struck schools, hospitals and residential areas.”
The Vatican referred specifically Sunday to the missile strike on an Iran elementary school that killed more than 165 people, most of them children, on February 28, the day the U.S. and Israel launched attacks across the Islamic Republic. U.S. officials blamed outdated intelligence for the strike, which they said is under investigation.
Leo expressed “great concern” over the heavy toll of the war in Lebanon, which he visited late last year.
“I hope that avenues for dialogue will emerge to support the country’s Authorities in implementing lasting solutions to the serious crisis currently unfolding, for the common good of all the Lebanese people,” he said.
Lebanese authorities reported that more than 800 people, including at least 100 children, have been killed and at least 200 injured since Israel launched its attacks on March 2 in retaliation for Iran-backed Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel. The escalating Israeli strikes across southern Beirut have forced an estimated 800,000 people from their homes, aid organizations say, warning of a looming humanitarian crisis, with dire shortages of food, basic healthcare and safe shelter amid Israel’s offensive.
Hours after his address, Pope Leo said in his homily at a Mass during a pastoral visit to Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Ponte Mammolo, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Rome: “Many of our brothers and sisters today suffer because of violent conflicts, caused by the absurd claim that problems and differences can be resolved with war. Instead, we must tirelessly pursue dialogue for peace.
“Some even claim to involve the name of God in these choices of death,” he continued. “But God cannot be enlisted by darkness. Rather, he always comes to give light, hope and peace to humanity — and it is peace that those who invoke him must seek.”
During the visit to the parish, the Holy Father met with children, teens and young adults and families as well as sick, elderly, disabled and poor parishioners assisted by Caritas, the Catholic Church’s global charitable network, and the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Rome-based Catholic lay organization known for its service to the poor and peacemaking efforts.
The 70-year-old Leo’s commends Sunday marked his latest of a series of his fervent appeals for dialogue and an end to the war, while maintaining the Vatican’s tradition of diplomatic neutrality by not naming Israel, the U.S. or those countries’ leaders.
“Not naming the aggressor is not new,” Catholic scholar, journalist and author Massimo Faggioli told The Catholic Observer in an interview. “What is new is that the pope is American, so this choice of not naming America could open him to criticism that he’s not doing that because he’s afraid of the power of America and its allies.”
But Faggioli — who had served as a theology professor at Pope Leo’s alma mater, Villanova University, for nearly a decade before becoming a professor last August at the Loyola Institute at Trinity College in Dublin — noted that U.S. cardinals including Washington Archbishop Cardinal Robert W. McElroy and Chicago Archbishop; Blaise J. Cupich, have spoken out against the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.
And this week, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin disputed U.S. claims of a “preventive war.” But stressing dialogue as a pathway to peace, Parolin added: “The Holy See speaks with everyone, and when necessary we speak also with the Americans, with the Israelis and show them what to us are the solutions.”
For his part, McElroy said the U.S.-Israeli-led attacks on Iran violated key tenets of the Catholic just war theory, including the lack of “an existing or imminent and objectively verifiable attack by Iran.”
“If preventative war were to be accepted morally, then all limits to the cause for going to war would be put in extreme jeopardy,” Cardinal McElroy told the archdiocesan newspaper The Catholic Standard last Monday. “There is immense concern that this war will spiral out of control and embroil the United States in ever greater depth…. Our entry into this war was not morally legitimate.”
Two days earlier, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, denounced the White House for posting on its official X account a video — captioned “Justice the American Way” — featuring scenes from popular action movies spliced with footage of strikes on Iran.
“A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game — it’s sickening,” Cardinal Cupich said in a statement. “Hundreds of people are dead, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, including scores of children who made the fatal mistake of going to school that day. Six U.S. soldiers have been killed. They are also dishonored by that social media post.
Then, three days ago, Pope Leo, clearly not referring to Muslims or Jews, stressed the importance of the sacrament of Reconciliation for those waging the war on Iran, saying, “One might ask: Do those Christians who bear serious responsibility in armed conflicts have the humility and courage to make a serious examination of conscience and to go to confession?”
Speaking at the Vatican to seminarians and priests as they attended training related to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Pope Leo added: “The dynamic of unity with God, with the Church, and within ourselves is a presupposition for peace among peoples. Only a reconciled person is capable of living in an unarmed and disarming way!”
Leo announced on March 7 his appointment of Italian Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia, a seasoned Holy See diplomat, as his ambassador to the U.S. amid the increasingly strained relations between the Vatican and the White House over the war on Iran, U.S military aggression in Venezuela and what Leo has condemned as “inhuman” Trump administration immigration policies.
As the permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations since 2019, the 68-year-old Caccia had often called on nations to choose diplomacy over military might.
“I receive this mission with both joy and a sense of trepidation,” Caccia said through the Holy See Press Office, framing his new role as apostolic nuncio to the U.S. as a “mission at the service of communion and peace.”
At the UN, Caccia — who succeeds retiring Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who had been U.S. nuncio since 2016 — had expressed the Holy See’s strong stances on nuclear weapons, poverty, climate change and migration under Leo and his predecessor, Pope Francis.
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