By Joseph Loconte
Monday, April 20, 2026
The pope can raise legitimate questions about whether
U.S. action against Iran meets the criteria of just war theory. But that is not
at all what he has done.
During the height of the Cold War struggle between
totalitarianism and democratic freedom, the West was united by a trio of
political and religious leaders characterized by intellectual seriousness and
moral courage: Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul II.
As a native son of Poland, the pontiff played a critical
role — with help from Reagan and Thatcher — in confronting the communist
apparatchiks in Poland and igniting a democratic revolution that ultimately
toppled the Soviet Union.
Not so today: Never has the democratic West appeared more
fragmented and befuddled in the face of new threats to human freedom.
President Trump has belittled the British military,
alienated most of America’s NATO allies, and, most recently, lashed out
publicly against Pope Leo XIV for his criticism of the U.S.-led war in Iran.
The president’s insulting rhetoric aimed at the leader of the world’s largest
Christian denomination demeans the American presidency. Let’s also stipulate
that Mr. Trump has made a series of false and, at times, grotesque remarks
concerning the war.
Yet, for all that, the statements by Pope Leo and the
Vatican about the Iran war beggar belief: If taken at face value, the Catholic
Church is led by a man who appears ready to abandon 1,500 years of Christian
moral theology about war, justice, and the problem of radical evil.
Let’s begin with the pope’s blanket claim — directed at
the U.S. war with Iran — that “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.”
The statement is not only patently false. It is morally
repugnant to anyone acquainted with the history of the 20th century. It is
impossible to overstate the extent of the horrors committed because facile
views like this — ignoring the reality and depth of human malevolence —
prevailed for too long in the West.
Indeed, the Catholic Church’s “concordat” with Adolf
Hitler in 1933 — granting him international respectability in exchange for a
measure of civic freedom for the church in Germany — could not tame his hatreds
or his lust to dominate. The “patient promotion of coexistence” could not stop
the Nazi blitzkrieg, the death camps, the plan to annihilate the Jewish people,
and the desire to destroy what was left of Western civilization.
The only force that could stop Hitlerism and “make space
for freedom” in subjugated Europe was the combined military might of the Allied
Forces in the most destructive war in world history — a just cause if ever
there was one under heaven.
Yet the pope seems indifferent to the Christian just war
tradition, articulated by Catholic thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, which
teaches that nation-states not only have the option but also, under the right
circumstances, the moral obligation to use lethal force to punish or
prevent a great evil.
As I have written elsewhere, the just war tradition
provided the conceptual basis for the Responsibility to Protect, a doctrine
defending the use of force to protect civilian populations from genocide or
other atrocities. In 2005, it was approved overwhelmingly by the U.N. General
Assembly — and by the Catholic Church, which agreed that, when other means
fail, the “international community” has the right and obligation to wage war to
“block the hand of an aggressor.”
The Iranian regime remains hell-bent on acquiring nuclear
weapons to destroy Israel and blackmail the West. It has engaged in acts of
barbarism — in the murder of tens of thousands of its own citizens and through
its terrorist network in the Middle East — that make it exactly the kind of
aggressor state the just war tradition had in mind.
The pope can raise legitimate questions about whether
U.S. military action against Iran meets the criteria of just war theory. But
that is not at all what he has done.
Consider his Palm Sunday homily, in which he referred
repeatedly to Jesus as the “King of Peace, who rejects war.” Referencing the
prophet Isaiah, he claimed that God “does not listen to the prayers of those
who wage war,” because “your hands are full of blood.”
The problem is not merely that the pope employs shoddy
exegesis — twisting the plain meaning of Scripture by ignoring its historical
context. The problem is not only that he has retroactively condemned the
prayers of the Catholic faithful throughout the centuries — the prayers of
priests, soldiers, and their families during wartime. The problem is not
primarily that he offers a misleading and one-dimensional view of Jesus — the
“Prince of Peace,” after all, is also called “the Lion of the tribe of Judah”
who will come again with “a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.”
The deepest problem is the pope’s claim that, in
denouncing the U.S. war against Iran, he is merely “preaching the gospel.” This
is most certainly what he is not doing.
The Gospel, as understood by the historic Christian
Church for 2,000 years, cannot be reduced to platitudes about peace and love.
“The whole point of the Christian doctrine of atonement,” wrote Protestant
theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, “is that God cannot be merciful without fulfilling
within himself, and on man’s behalf, the requirements of divine justice.”
The Christian Gospel, the message that transformed the
ancient world, is simply this: that Jesus, the God-man, bore upon Himself the
judgment of God for our sins by His death and resurrection, making possible
forgiveness and new life. As the apostle John expressed it: “For God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him
shall not perish but have eternal life.”
The earliest Christians believed that Jesus literally
battled the forces of hell — and prevailed. Indeed, the Greek word for gospel, euangelion,
was used in ancient Rome to signify a military victory. The powers of evil were
vanquished, but not through “dialogue among peoples.”
The enduring modern temptation is to substitute the
biblical Gospel for a progressive, pacifist illusion about human nature and the
problem of radical evil. Writing at the start of the Second World War, Niebuhr
summarized the religious mood thus: “Some easy and vapid escape is sought from
the terrors and woes of a tragic era.”
Such an outlook may bring comfort to the butchers in
Tehran, but it will surely not advance the cause of peace.
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