2 US Cardinals Reject US-Israeli War on Iran as Pope Seeks Talks and Diplomacy

Rome — Pope Leo XIV on Monday called for an end to the US-Israel war in Iran, issuing a new but still muted appeal as two of his US cardinals condemned the war, rejecting the rationale for starting it and the “video game” manner in which it is being portrayed.

A Vatican spokesman issued a statement late Monday, saying the Rev. Maronite Catholic priest in southern Lebanon. Pierre El Rai expressed his “deep sorrow” for Leo after he was killed on Monday. Vatican News said the Claia priest, Rai, was killed in the bombing while trying to rescue an injured parishioner.

Leo prayed for all those killed, especially the children.

“They are following the events with concern and pray for an end to hostilities as soon as possible,” spokesman Matteo Bruni said in an after-hours statement.

Leo has issued a series of muted pleas for dialogue in the week since the war began, apparently anxious to avoid fueling controversy.

Italian newspaper La Repubblica noted the paradox in an article on Monday: The Pope is speaking in general terms of dialogue and diplomacy, while political leaders cite religious arguments and scriptures to justify war.

But while Leo was far from condemning war, his bishops did not.

Cardinal Robert McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, said the United States and Israel failed to meet minimum standards for a war to be considered morally just. Such standards require that it is a response to an imminent threat, that the US and Israel have clearly expressed their intentions, or that the benefits outweigh the harm.

“Lebanon could descend into civil war. The world’s oil supply is under great pressure. The potential disintegration of Iran could create new and dangerous realities. And the potential for massive casualties on all sides is immense,” McIlroy told the diocesan newspaper. “For all these reasons, Catholic teaching leads to the conclusion that our entry into this war is not morally legitimate.”

Cardinal Blaise Cupich, Archbishop of Leo’s hometown of Chicago, condemned the White House’s combative social media posts that interspersed action movie clips with real scenes.

“A real war with real death and real suffering is treated like a video game – it’s unhealthy,” Cupich wrote in a statement over the weekend that was picked up by Vatican media. “Our government treating the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment is just another thing to swipe at while we wait in line at the grocery store.”

Appointed by Pope Francis, Cupich and McIlroy have been at the forefront of criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Earlier this year he, joined by Newark Cardinal Joseph Tobin, called on the Trump administration to adopt a moral foreign policy instead of inflicting pain on the world.

They are not the only ones. Filipino Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, vice president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, expressed similar disdain for the spectacle of conflict and how it has made modern warfare largely detached from human reality.

“From distant command centers, military operators look at a screen where maps, radar signals and algorithm-generated targets move like icons in a computer game. A cursor moves. A coordinate is chosen. A click is made. And a missile is launched,” he said in comments reported by Vatican News.

The Holy See has a tradition of diplomatic neutrality but its diplomatic leadership has rejected the Trump administration’s justification for attacking Iran.

“If states are recognized as having the right to ‘preventive war’ according to their own criteria and without a sophisticated legal framework, the whole world risks burning,” Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin told Vatican media last week.

Archbishop Gabriel Caccia, the Vatican’s new ambassador to the United States, will soon have to clarify the Vatican’s position. Cassia was named this weekend to the demanding position of juggling the Holy See’s relations with the US bishops and the White House.

Vatican commentator Massimo Faggioli, a professor at Trinity College Dublin, said in a social media post that “new tensions will have to be managed between America’s first Pope Leo XIV’s Vatican and this USA of Trump, now at the head of a war fueled by national-religious rhetoric.”

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