Pope Leo XIV Awards Top Diplomatic Honor to Iran’s Ambassador — Mid-War
The American pope named Mohammad Hossein Mokhtari a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Pontifical Order of Pius IX in the same week Donald Trump declared the ceasefire “on life support” and accused Leo of wanting Tehran armed with nuclear weapons.
Thank you for reading! Letters from Leo is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this movement, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Pope Leo XIV has named Mohammad Hossein Mokhtari, Iran’s ambassador to the Vatican, a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Pontifical Order of Pius IX, according to a certificate dated May 8 and signed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the pope’s Secretary of State.
The honor raises the Iranian envoy to one of the most senior classes of the highest active papal order, founded in 1847 by Pope Pius IX and conferred today on senior diplomats and heads of state.
By itself, the award is not unusual. By Vatican custom, the Grand Cross is ordinarily conferred on resident ambassadors to the Holy See after roughly two years in post, and Mokhtari presented his credentials to Pope Francis in December 2023 — two and a half years before Cardinal Parolin signed this certificate.
But Iranian state media is not treating this as a routine retirement honor. PressTV and the West Asia News Agency are running the certificate alongside images of Mokhtari with Pope Leo XIV, framing the medal as a counter-signal from an American pope to a wartime American president — a quiet diplomatic verdict on Donald Trump’s bombing campaign against Iran
The timing is for them the story.
Top conservatives in the United States seem to agree. Some went to X (formerly Twitter) to express their dismay, including Fox News host Brian Kilmeade.
Leo gave the Holy See’s highest active diplomatic decoration to Iran’s envoy in the same week Trump declared the U.S.-Iran ceasefire “on life support,” called Tehran’s latest peace proposal “garbage,” and signaled openness to renewed military action against the country whose ambassador now wears the Order of Pius IX.
He awarded it days after Trump told Hugh Hewitt — in radio remarks I covered last week — that the first American pope was “endangering a lot of Catholics” because Leo “thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” The accusation is a lie.
The Holy See has opposed nuclear weapons since their advent, and Cardinal Parolin told the Italian press last week that the pope’s position on Iran’s nuclear program is identical to the position the Vatican has held since the dawn of the atomic age.
Parolin quoted Saint Paul’s second letter to Timothy — that Leo will continue to preach peace “in season and out of season” — and added that whether the pope’s message “is pleasing or not, that is another matter.”
Donald Trump has spent more than a month asking, in public and through surrogates, that the first U.S.-born pope behave like an American chaplain to American empire.
The president has told Catholics he does not want a pope who criticizes American wars, who calls Iranian civilian deaths unacceptable, or who tells the world that God does not bless any conflict. Stripped of euphemism, the White House is demanding a pope who does not criticize the United States.
This is the pope who told reporters last month on the papal plane to Angola that the U.S. administration “does not intimidate him,” whose first Easter address ordered the world’s warmakers to “lay down your weapons,” and who has now declared in Latin, on Vatican parchment, that Iran’s envoy is the Church’s colleague in the work of peace.
None of this should be confused with a Vatican endorsement of the Islamic Republic. Pope Leo XIV has condemned Iran’s killing of its own protesters — on the papal flight back from Africa in April, he answered a question about Tehran’s deadly January crackdown by saying,
“When a regime, when a country, takes decisions which take away the lives of people unjustly, then obviously that is something that should be condemned.”
The Vatican’s diplomatic instrument is not moral approval; it is the language by which the Church identifies its negotiating partners and signals that a door of dialogue remains open. That language carries a sharper meaning when the door it keeps open is the one the United States is trying to slam shut.
At Letters from Leo, we stand with Catholics and people of goodwill who refuse the bargain the White House keeps demanding — bless the bombing or surrender your patriotism. Pope Leo XIV has refused that again and again since this war commenced in February. We refuse it from where we sit too.
In an era when the president of the United States accuses the first U.S.-born pope of endangering Catholics for opposing an unjust war, this is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because readers are hungry for something deeper than rage and propaganda.
They are looking for courage rooted in Catholic teaching — for a movement that can name what is happening when the White House calls peace appeals “garbage.”
If you believe this movement matters — Catholics and people of goodwill standing for human dignity against a war the U.S.-born pope has called unacceptable — I am asking you to join us.
If you’d like to invest in our mission, here are three ways you can help this Easter season:
Subscribe as a paid member to receive exclusive posts about the life and formation of Pope Leo and to 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 members receive our full biographical series on the life and formation of Pope Leo XIV, our ongoing Epstein-Bannon Investigation, the Scripture Reflection Series, and the best of our full archive.
Whether you give $0, $5, $50, $500, $1,000, or more, your presence here matters — no matter your faith or your politics.
Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.
The fact that the Iranian regime did in fact murder a huge number of protestors cannot be denied, however.
Iran can make peace. Iran can have peace. We can pray along with the Holy Father and all who serve the Prince of Peace with open hearts.
Many states have done wicked things. Sin abounds in this world. Persia has a history of civility long ago. They can live in their better ways, we believe.
We do not need to forgive Iran or ignore wickedness done. We need to live in the world where change and salvation can occur.
That’s all we are saying.