“Illegal and Immoral” — Pope Leo Expected to Condemn Trump’s Iran Strike and Appeal for Peace at Sunday Angelus

A source close to the pontiff tells me that the first American pope will use tomorrow’s address to deliver a forceful moral rebuke of the U.S.-Israeli military assault.

Thank you for reading! Letters from Leo is a reader-supported publication. If you find value in my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or making a one-time donation.

A source close to Pope Leo XIV told me Saturday afternoon that the pope is expected to use his Sunday Angelus to condemn President Trump’s military strike against Iran and issue a sweeping appeal for peace.

The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described the pope as deeply grieved by the joint U.S.-Israeli assault launched Saturday morning — codenamed “Operation Epic Fury” by the Pentagon — which targeted sites across Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, and other Iranian cities.

The source said the pontiff views the strikes as “immoral, illegal, and a grave threat to the entire human family.”

If the remarks come as expected, they will represent one of Pope Leo’s most forceful and direct public confrontations with President Trump since his election on May 8, 2025, and the latest chapter in what has become the defining moral clash of this pontificate.

A Pattern That Cannot Be Ignored

This will not be the first time Pope Leo XIV has rebuked American military aggression from the window of the Apostolic Apartments.

In January, after Trump ordered U.S. special forces into Venezuela to arrest President Nicolás Maduro, Leo used his Sunday Angelus to call for paths of justice and peace while safeguarding Venezuela’s sovereignty.

Days later, in his annual State of the World address to 184 ambassadors, the pope warned that “war is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading” — a line that landed like a thunderclap in a world already rattled by the Venezuela invasion.

And this past June, after the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan, Leo stood before thousands in St. Peter’s Square and delivered a devastating plea. “Stop the tragedy of war before it becomes an irreparable abyss,” he said.

“War does not solve problems, but rather it amplifies them.” It was a direct, unmistakable rebuke of the president who ordered those strikes.

Leo has confronted unjust war more than 150 times in his first nine months as pope.

• He has demanded that America stop arming the world.

• He told world leaders to end the killing — all of it.

• He chastised Israel for airstrikes ahead of his Lebanon visit.

• He blasted Netanyahu’s Gaza campaign and named the dead.

• He rejected “armed peace” on New Year’s Day.

• And he declared, plainly and prophetically, that war is never holy.

The record is unambiguous. Pope Leo XIV has built a papacy on the conviction that the Gospel demands peace — and that no nation, including his own, gets a pass.

The Stakes of Tomorrow

What makes tomorrow different is the scale of what Trump has done.

This is not a targeted overnight strike. According to multiple reports, the Pentagon is planning several days of sustained military operations across Iran. Trump himself acknowledged there could be American casualties — a stunning admission from a man who once vowed to end forever wars.

Iranian ballistic missiles have already struck U.S. military bases across the Middle East in retaliation. The entire region is on fire.

And it all happened after a diplomat from Oman announced that a breakthrough had been reached — that Iran had agreed to nuclear concessions. Peace was, by the Omani foreign minister’s own words, “within reach.”

Then the bombs fell.

This is the precise scenario Pope Leo has been warning about since the first moments of his pontificate.

On May 8, 2025, just hours after his election, the new pope stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s and spoke his first words to the world: “Peace be with you all!”

He described the peace of Christ as “disarming, humble, and persevering.” Not armed. Not coercive. Not imposed by B-2 bombers over Tehran.

Those first words were not ceremonial. They were a promise.

A Moral Reckoning for American Catholics

For American Catholics, the moment could not be more clarifying.

Catholic social teaching has long held that war is permissible only as a last resort, when all diplomatic avenues have been exhausted, when the use of force is proportionate, and when there is a reasonable chance of success without disproportionate harm.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is explicit: governments have a duty to avoid war and pursue every peaceful alternative before resorting to military force.

By those standards — by any honest reading of the Church’s own moral tradition — Trump’s strike fails every test. Diplomacy had not been exhausted; it had been abandoned at the moment of breakthrough.

The force is not proportionate; it is, in the president’s own words, designed to “lay waste” to an entire nation’s military infrastructure and overthrow its government. And the consequences for the region, for global stability, and for millions of Iranian civilians are incalculable.

This is the same consistent ethic of life that Leo has preached from his first day — the teaching that being pro-life means opposing the killing of innocents everywhere, from the womb to the war zone.

As I reported when Leo first tried to stop Trump’s Venezuela operation, the pope’s point is one that some on the American right have never wanted to hear: you cannot claim the Gospel while cheering on the bombs.

What Comes Next

If the source is right — and I have every reason to believe they are — then what the world will hear from Pope Leo XIV tomorrow is not a diplomatic murmur. It will be a prophetic cry.

It will come from a pope who, as I have covered since the beginning of this newsletter, refuses to trim the Gospel to fit partisan agendas.

A pope who has confronted Trump on Venezuela, on immigration, on Ukraine, and on the arms trade.

Pope Leo XIV did not choose this moral fight. Donald Trump did — by choosing war over a peace deal that was, by all accounts, already in hand.

Tomorrow, the first American pope will stand at his window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, look out at a world stumbling toward catastrophe, and say what he has said from the very beginning:

Peace be with you all.

The question is whether anyone in the White House is listening.

At Letters from Leo, we stand with the millions of American Catholics — and countless others of goodwill — who believe that peace is not weakness, that diplomacy is not surrender, and that the Gospel demands more of us than silence while bombs fall on a nation whose leaders had just agreed to negotiate.

In an era poisoned by cruelty and division, we remain rooted in a faith that refuses to flinch before injustice or bow to the idols of fear and authoritarianism.

We’re not just watching history. We’re making it.

This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for something deeper than rage and cynicism.

They’re looking for courage, for truth, for love made visible in action — and right now, in the shadow of war, that hunger has never been more urgent.

If you’re ready to build a country — and a Church — that chooses peace over power, justice over vengeance, and the Gospel over the war machine, then I’m asking for you to join us.

If you’d like to invest in our mission, here are three ways you can help this Lenten season:

• Subscribe as a paid member to receive exclusive posts about the life and formation of Pope Leo and help sustain this newsletter.

• Donate with a one-time gift to fuel this project’s mission.

• Share this post (and Letters from Leo) with a friend who might enjoy it.

Paid subscribers have access to the Lenten Reflection Series and our new investigative series on Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon’s attempt to take down Pope Francis.

You’ll also get access to the Q&A mailbag that opened last month, where you can ask me anything about American politics, Catholicism, Donald Trump, Pope Leo, JD Vance — or my own faith, biography, and life.

Whether you give $0, $1, or $1,000, your presence here matters — no matter your faith or your politics.

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