Pope Leo XIV Goes to War

Voldemort is sending the Gerald Ford Naval group to Anzio, Italy. "If the pontiff doesn't shut the f-ck up I'll send the Vatican back to the stone age".

Pope Leo XIV Goes to War

The pontiff wrongly suggests that pacifism is the sole acceptable moral position.

By William McGurn, WSJ

April 6, 2026 5:18 pm ET

At the Easter Sunday celebration in the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo XIV delivered a bracing message about the war in Iran: “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!” he said. “Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them! We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it and becoming indifferent. Indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people.”

Pope Leo didn’t name names. He didn’t have to. This was a shot at Donald Trump. In the abstract, the pope’s words might apply to any number of leaders, including Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran. But the press are taking this as a shot against President Trump—and that is how it was meant.

It’s a solemn development anytime America goes to war. For the enemy, war means destruction, the deaths of soldiers and, possibly, the tragic, unintended killing of innocents. So too for the U.S. The toll of this war is so far tiny compared with other wars, but the conflict has already claimed the lives of more than a dozen Americans.

Less obvious from the headlines, war causes soul-searching among our troops. The American in uniform must ask himself: Am I doing the right thing? Am I prosecuting the war honorably? When my test comes, will I do right by my fellow soldiers and the rules of war?

The Catholic Church has spoken on all these issues at least since St. Augustine. It’s called the just-war tradition, and although it doesn’t spit out neat yes-or-no answers, it does point to the right questions.

Unfortunately, the public impression created over the past several decades is that pacifism is the only true Christian response to military conflict. And Pope Leo isn’t the only leader to encourage this view. A few years back, in remarks that touched on the war in Ukraine, Pope Francis declared, “There is no such thing as a just war.” Though he didn’t go nearly as far, in early 2003, Pope St. John Paul II made clear he thought the U.S. war in Iraq was wrong.

The muddle of Catholic teaching on war has been a long time in the making. Few churchmen will explicitly promote pacifism as the only proper Christian option. But that is the effect. And the best answer to such pacifism is clarity.

“Christianity isn’t a pacifist religion,” says the Rev. Gerald Murray, a Catholic priest and commentator on EWTN. “Churchmen need to affirm that the legitimate use of force is virtuous. Protecting the innocent isn’t simply the ideal we hope to attain, it is a clear duty.

“If negotiation is the only way to solve conflicts, Pope Leo should send home the Swiss Guard and train negotiators to meet with anyone who shows up at Vatican City with a gun or a bomb. Right now, everyone is treated as a suspect by having to pass through metal detectors to get into St. Peter’s.”

In addition, pacifism is always an individual option, not a communal response. To put it another way, I have the right to turn my cheek. I don’t have the right to turn my neighbor’s cheek.

It’s up to the actors, in this case President Trump and the leadership in Iran, to judge the necessity for action and the moral content of their own decisions. Militants may not get the last word, but they do get the first. They have more knowledge of the actual conditions. And they bear responsibility for what happens.

On the war in Iran, Pope Leo has made statements that receive applause but aren’t true. When he asserts that negotiation is the only way to resolve conflict, he forgets that as often as not military action is necessary to bring combatants to the negotiating table.

Last month, in an address to the Italian Military Ordinariate, Pope Leo stated that we ought to respect what military people do as a “vocation.” “The soldier’s identity,” he said, “is forged by generosity, a spirit of service, lofty aspirations, and profound sentiments.”

Beautiful words. Alas, the church too often seems to withdraw such respect as soon as the soldier has to fight. War is always a failure—a failure of diplomacy, a failure to reconcile—and invariably carries abominable human costs. But when churchmen can’t bring themselves to take seriously even the possibility of a just war, they become functionally pacifist.

That is both a terrible abdication of responsibility and a false application of principle that serves only the interests of the wicked.

Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.