“No War Is Blessed by God” — Pope Leo XIV Defies Trump as the U.S. Bombs Iran Again
Opening the year’s second consistory, the pope signaled the Vatican may rewrite the just war doctrine itself — the teaching JD Vance and Mike Johnson invoked to bless the strikes. The week-old ceasefire already lies in ruins.
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Pope Leo XIV opened the second extraordinary consistory of the year on Friday with a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, and he used the homily to render a verdict on the war his own country is waging — and on modern warfare itself.
“War is never worthy of humanity, and it is never blessed by God,” he told the cardinals before him, “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.”
It was the second time this year that Leo summoned the College of Cardinals to Rome, and 178 of the Church’s 241 cardinals answered the call. They came to take up the synod, the safeguarding of human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence, and above all the wars tearing across the globe.
The pope asked them to pray for “the gift of peace in unity.”
The timing escaped no one. Here’s what I mean.
