On March 1 in his monthly prayer intention and address at St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo solemnly expressed his “deep concern” over “what is happening in the Middle East and in Iran during this tumultuous time.” “Stability and peace,” he reassured his audience, “are not achieved through mutual threats, nor through the use of weapons, which sow destruction, suffering, and death.” Rather, they are achieved “only through reasonable, sincere, and responsible dialogue.”
The pontiff was reiterating what he had asserted in early January when addressing the Vatican’s diplomatic corps. “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties,” he declared, “is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.” As a result, war is “back in vogue,” “a zeal for war is spreading,” and “[p]eace is no longer sought as a gift and a desirable good in itself.” Such a scenario, Leo concluded, “gravely threatens the rule of law, which is the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence.”
On March 4, the Vatican’s secretary of state Pietro Parolin continued Leo’s line of reasoning and decried joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. In an interview with Vatican News, Parolin lamented the “erosion of international law” and particularly the idea of “preventive” war apart from a “supranational legal framework” in what is currently being waged against Iran. Parolin spoke with “great sorrow” concerning the “fragile” communities in the Middle East that are “once again plunged into the horror of war, which brutally shatters human lives, brings destruction, and drags entire nations into spirals of violence.”
Unfortunately, one finds in Parolin’s assessment no examination of the 30,000-plus Iranian citizens and protestors who have been killed in Iran’s war against its own people over the last few months. One finds therein no consideration of the “horrors of war” that Iran has caused through advancing proxy-wars on Israel and the U.S. for decades. And neither is there any reference by the Vatican secretary of state to the deadliest day in Israel’s history—the October 7, 2023, massacre of over 1,200 people and the taking of 250 hostages by Hamas, an Iranian proxy, which, more than any single event, precipitated the current U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran—no, not a word.
As to the justice of coercive intervention by nations and the undertaking of war, Parolin lacks moral clarity. He observes: “When speaking of the causes of war, it is complex to determine who is right and who is wrong.” While acknowledging in passing that “Iranian aspirations for freedom from the current regime are also a cause of deep concern,” Parolin questions “whether anyone truly believes that the solution can come through the launching of missiles and bombs.” Leo’s prayer on March 1, then, summarizes the Vatican’s burden: “May diplomacy regain its proper role, and may the well-being of peoples, who yearn for peaceful existence founded on justice, be upheld. And let us continue to pray for peace.”
This, it needs saying, is the same pontiff who responded on March 3, “I can’t comment” when questioned about the imprisonment of Jimmy Lai, his fellow Catholic and outspoken pro-democracy advocate sentenced on February 9 to twenty years in prison under China’s national security law. When a report from EWTN News asked Leo about the sentence, the pope simply replied, “I can’t comment on that,” saying only, “Let’s pray for less hatred and more peace. And work for authentic dialogue.”
Leo is continuing the line of reasoning of his predecessor, Pope Francis, and from the beginning of his tenure he has regularly addressed issues of war and peace. A notable example is Leo’s June 25, 2025, speech to a general audience, wherein he addressed the challenges of Iran, Israel, Palestine, and Syria, calling for “dialogue, peace, and diplomacy” while emphasizing the need to reject “arrogance and revenge.” That particular address concluded with the pope citing Isaiah 2:4, with its promise that “nations will not train for war anymore.” One can only imagine how discouraging such comments would have been to Ukrainians themselves; after all, who more than the poor people of Ukraine, victims of repeated unjust Russian aggression, wishes for peace?
Leo’s most recent condemnation of the Iran war followed his weekly Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square on March 22. There he concluded with a renewed prayer “that hostilities may cease and paths to peace may finally open up, based on sincere dialogue and respect for the dignity of every human person.”
The problem with the Vatican’s assessment of foreign affairs and military conflict is inter alia an inadequate understanding of “peace” and an unrealistic view of “dialogue and diplomacy.” Leo’s statements reflect the Vatican’s tendency to address mere symptoms while failing to acknowledge the root causes of war and aggression. As it concerns the Iranian regime, we are forced to ask: What has Israel had to face for decades? Hate, death, and destruction—the ongoing fruits of a devilish “Death to Israel!” mindset. What, we may ask, is the responsibility of Israel’s allies and free nations in general to Iran’s proxy war against Israel through Middle Eastern terrorist networks? Leo and Cardinal Parolin do not say. Alas, “peace, dialogue and diplomacy” are not within the purview of Iran’s theocratic vision.
In truth, at the international level “arrogance and revenge” must be deterred, even countered. Otherwise, there exists no such thing as “international law,” no “supranational legal framework”; such becomes only a figment of the imagination. Sadly, neither the pope nor the Vatican’s secretary of state seems able to acknowledge or properly contextualize this moral reality. To pray, based on the prophet Isaiah’s prediction that “Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more,” absent meaningful differentiation between victims and aggressors is to misappropriate future promise for present reality, and more egregiously, to ignore divine commands that require political authorities to punish evil and reward good.
Prayers for peace are misguided if they make a presumption of unrealistic “dialogue and diplomacy.” Rogue regimes such as Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea will pretend to enter dialogue and diplomacy, all the while employing them merely as another tool of warfare. Evil in the present life must be deterred; otherwise, any concoction of “peace” is in reality an unjust peace, as terrorists, mafia and mass murderers well remind us. This was the lesson of Reinhold Niebuhr’s 1944 classic The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, where he observed that the “children of light” who desire peace at all costs will inevitably be taken advantage of by the “children of darkness” who desire power at all costs because the latter have no interest in negotiation or compromise while the former thinks exclusively in these terms.
Sadly, Pope Leo and secretary of state Parolin have chosen to sacrifice moral clarity for the sake of peace at all costs, an approach which will further the pursuit of neither. Instead, it would be helpful if the Vatican were to acknowledge the essential moral asymmetry between the U.S. and Israel on one hand and various authoritarian regimes on the other, even while lamenting the tragedy of all armed conflict.
