“Contact Your Congressmen” — Pope Leo XIV Enlists Americans to End the Iran War After Suggesting Trump War Crimes

The pope’s direct appeal to citizens landed as Archbishop Paul Coakley, the USCCB president, called on Trump to “step back from the precipice” and summoned American Catholics to Leo’s vigil for peace.

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Pope Leo XIV called on ordinary citizens around the world today to contact their political leaders and demand an end to the war in Iran.

Speaking to reporters at the Vatican, the first American pope turned his moral appeal into a direct political instruction for the people in the pews.

“I would simply say, once again, what I said in the Urbi et Orbi message on Sunday, asking all people of goodwill to search always for peace and not violence, to reject war — especially a war which many people have said is an unjust war, which is continuing to escalate and which is not resolving anything… I would invite the citizens of all the countries involved to contact the authorities, political leaders, congressmen, to ask them — tell them to work for peace and to reject war always.”

To respond to Pope Leo’s call, Letters from Leo has created a simple app where you can call your Member of Congress and tell them this immoral and illegal war immediately.

The remarks were a deliberate echo of the pope’s Urbi et Orbi message on Easter Sunday, and an extension of the theme he has returned to almost daily since the Iran strike began on February 28.

Leo again described the conflict as unjust.

He said the war “is continuing to escalate” and “is not resolving anything,” tying the fighting to a wider portrait of global disorder — a worldwide economic crisis, an energy crisis, and instability across the Middle East that he said is “only provoking more hatred throughout the world.”

Leo then suggested Trump is committing war crimes by reminding the world that attacks on civilian infrastructure violate international law and called such attacks a sign of “the hatred, the division, the destruction that the human being is capable of.” The innocent, he said — children, the elderly, the sick — would continue to be counted among the victims of this war.

Leo wasn’t alone.

The USCCB President, Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, released a statement this afternoon calling 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.”

The threat of destroying a whole civilization and the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure, he wrote, “cannot be morally justified.” The statement then invited every American Catholic — bishops, priests, laity, and “all people yearning for true peace” — to join Pope Leo’s Vigil for Peace this Saturday, April 11, whether in parishes, in chapels, or before the Lord in the silence of their own hearts.

Coakley’s statement arrived after Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the head of the U.S. military archdiocese, declared the Iran war unjust.

It places the USCCB president on the same ground as the pope and rebukes those bishops who have treated the war as a distant political matter rather than a crisis of conscience.

Leo has told American Catholics what to do. The vigil on Saturday — and the phones in every congressional office on Monday — will show who was listening.

At Letters from Leo, we stand with Pope Leo XIV, Archbishop Coakley, and the millions of American Catholics who refuse to treat the bombing of another country as a spectator sport.

The Holy Father has called this war unjust and asked American Catholics to pray and to pick up the phone. We intend to honor that request, loudly and publicly, until the killing ends.

In an era poisoned by the normalization of aerial bombing and the commodification of human life, we remain rooted in a faith that names war for what it is — a sin against God and neighbor — and refuses to baptize it in the language of patriotism or necessity.

This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for a Church that still believes the Sermon on the Mount applies during wartime.

What they want is courage and truth and a Gospel loud enough to be heard over the drumbeat of the war machine. Right now, as the Trump administration expands its military campaign in Iran, that hunger has never been more urgent.

If you believe this movement matters — Catholics and people of goodwill standing for human dignity against the logic of endless war — I am asking you to join us.

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Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.