This story has been updated.
By Gary Gately
Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday denounced as “truly unacceptable” President Donald J. Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization while calling on U.S. citizens to urge congressional lawmakers to end the Iran war.
Hours after Trump threatened on social media to destroythe “whole civilization” of Iran unless its leaders agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz, Pope Leo told reporters at the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome: “This is truly unacceptable! There are certainly issues of international law here, but even more, it is a moral question concerning the good of the people as a whole, in its entirety.”
Leo did not refer to specific leaders. But he specifically mentioned congressional lawmakers while urging U.S. citizens and residents of “all the countries involved” to contact elected officials. “Tell them,” the Holy Father advised, “to work for peace and to reject war and violence” and remind them that attacks on civilian infrastructure violate international law and “are also a sign of the hatred, division, and destruction that the human being is capable of.”
The first U.S.-born pontiff recalled his Easter Sunday Urbi et Orbi (“To the City and the World”) message “to reject war — especially a war which many people have said is unjust, which is continuing to escalate and which is not resolving anything.” Leo’s first Easter message came after his increasingly forceful Holy Week calls for peace, including a direct appeal last Tuesday to Trump to seek an “off-ramp” to end the Iran war and a Palm Sunday warning that God rejects the prayers of those who invoke religion to justify war.
On Tuesday, Leo he summed up his message to world leaders: “Come back to the table, let’s talk, let’s look for solutions in a peaceful way — and let’s remember especially the innocent children, the elderly, sick, so many people who have already become or will become victims of this continued warfare.”
Earlier in the day, the Vatican released a message from Pope Leo to the residents of Debel, Lebanon, after ongoing Israeli attacks prevented the Vatican’s nuncio to the country from delivering humanitarian aid.
In the message, Leo, the leader of the 1.4 billion-member Catholic Church, expressed solidarity with the people of southern Lebanon under heavy Israeli attack.
“In your misfortune, in the injustice you endure, in the feeling of abandonment you experience, you are very close to Jesus. You are close to Him also on this Easter Day when He conquered the forces of evil, and which resonates for you as a promise of the future,” reads the message, signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), also condemned Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization if the Islamic Republic does not meet his demands by 8 p.m. EDT.
“The threat of destroying a whole civilization and the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure cannot be morally justified,” Coakley said in a statement Tuesday. “There are other ways to resolve conflict between peoples. I call on President Trump to step back from the precipice of war and negotiate a just settlement for the sake of peace and before more lives are lost.”
Before Tuesday, the USCCB had avoided directly naming Trump in its criticism of his policies, including in the conference’s November pastoral message opposing “indiscriminate mass deportation” as an affront to “God-given dignity.”
Coakley met with Trump at the White House in January, becoming the first USCCB president to do so in nearly a decade. Days later, the USCCB praised the Trump administration for reducing wait times for religious worker visas.
