Pope Leo Rebukes Trump, Vance, Johnson on Iran Strikes: War ‘Is Never Blessed By God’

AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia

Pope Leo XIV offered a sharp rebuke to defenses by President Donald Trump and other Republicans for the Iran war, telling a gathering of cardinals that war “is never blessed by God.”

It’s far from the first time the first American pope has spoken out on the topic of military actions. And it comes amid Trump’s ongoing aggressive critiques of Leo for his outspoken advocacy against numerous wars, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and more recently the U.S. and Israeli strikes in Iran.

Before he became pope, the former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost objected to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, took issue with Vice President JD Vance’s comments about the theological concept of ordo amoris, and rejected Trump’s invitation to join his newly-formed “Board of Peace.”

The war in Iran has sparked more intense and express critiques from the pontiff. In March he urged Christian political leaders who start wars to examine their “conscience” and “go to confession,” and he followed that with several social media posts in April calling for “peace” and calling for the world to “reject the logic of violence and war.”

Leo gathered the Cardinals to the Vatican last week, and made comments on the topic of war during his homily Friday, with his remarks reported on by Vatican News. The pope addressed multiple issues but war was the one highlighted by the headline used by the Holy See’s official news portal: “Pope at Consistory Opening Mass: War is never blessed by God.”

The Vatican News report described Leo as inviting the Cardinals to ask for “the gift of peace in unity” as he delved into war and peace:

Reflecting on the many conflicts affecting humanity, he stressed that “war is never worthy of humanity, and it is never blessed by God, because, even if we are equipped with high-tech weapons, the Creator has endowed us with intelligence and free will to resolve conflicts as human beings and not as beasts.”

The Pope then added that “peace is a duty of justice because we are one human family, a magnifica humanitas that finds its head and redeemer in Christ.”

Referring to the path outlined in his first encyclical and recalling the teaching of Saint Paul VI, the Pope encouraged perseverance in building the “civilization of love,” in which justice and charity are inseparably linked.

“As she proclaims the Gospel, amid both joys and persecutions, the Church is never partial, since she is for everyone, and to each she addresses the same message of conversion and salvation,” said the Pope.

Christopher Hale, who covers news regarding the pope at his Letters from Leo Substack, noted the broader implications of Leo’s remarks, arguing that this moment “signaled the Vatican may rewrite the just war doctrine itself,” which Republicans like Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had “invoked to bless the strikes.”

“The timing” of Leo’s homily “escaped no one,” wrote Hale. “As Leo gathered the cardinals to plead for peace, the United States was bombing Iran for the second straight day,” as the “week-old ceasefire already lies in ruins.”

According to Hale, Vatican officials have “signaled” that Leo intends to “formally revisit” the “just war” theory.

Leo had already taken aim at the doctrine in his May encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (the same phrase he mentioned in his Friday homily), Hale pointed out, saying that it was “now outdated” and “has all too often been used to justify any kind of war.”

“Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness,” wrote Leo. “The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.”

This latest criticism by Leo also comes in the aftermath of “two of the most powerful Catholics in the United States government” defending the Iran strikes “in openly theological language,” wrote Hale. As examples, he cited Vance’s remarks at a Turning Point USA event, who “invoked what he called a ‘more than 1,000-year tradition of just war theory’ to argue that the campaign against Iran satisfied the Church’s standard for a moral war,” and Johnson, who “plac[ed] the administration’s bombing under the same banner and credit[ed] Trump and Vance with a ‘deep understanding’ of the stakes.”

“The just war tradition Vance reached for was never written as a permission slip,” wrote Hale, citing Leo’s words to argue that the Trump administration’s just war theory argument ” collapses, and it collapses on the Church’s own terms,” because “[a] doctrine meant to restrain that impulse [to war] cannot be turned into the instrument that excuses it.”

In Magnifica Humanitas, Hale wrote, Leo “set the warning down plainly” that “no algorithm can make war morally acceptable,” and “[w]hether a selected reading of Augustine and Aquinas can accomplish what an algorithm cannot is the question Vance and Johnson have now forced the whole Church to confront.”

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