rome —
On a windy Tuesday night in Castel Gandolfo, I asked Pope Leo XIV. With war potentially escalating in the Middle East, I wanted to know if they had a message for President Donald Trump and other leaders of the United States and Israel.
His answer was eloquent. America’s first pope, speaking in English, said he hoped President Trump would find a “way out” to end the war with Iran. He called for an end to the violence and negotiations between leaders.
It is rare for a pope to name a world leader, and this is the first time Leo has publicly mentioned President Trump. His answers pointed out how much the war was weighing on him and spoke in language that could be heard and understood in the White House.
It also brought into stark relief the differences between the two most high-profile American leaders on the world stage right now. On the one hand, Pope Leo, a Chicago-born Augustinian friar, is known as a gentle, reserved personality who doesn’t seek the spotlight. President Trump, on the other hand, is a near-ubiquitous figure in news stories and a disruptor of world politics.
Leo is not a confrontational pope, but he has increasingly spoken out about the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. And he does so just as US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth frames the war effort as divinely supported, even using Biblical justifications.
Leo was repulsed by this idea. “Jesus is the King of peace, he rejects war and no one can use him to justify war,” he said on Palm Sunday at the beginning of Holy Week. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who make war, but rejects them.” Like Hegseth, Leo also quoted the Bible, which in his case said that the hands of those who make war are “covered with blood.”
In his contribution to the Appian Institute, Italian theologian and philosopher Marcello Neri wrote: “It is clear that the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church strongly opposes Mr. Hegseth’s logic of violence justified in the name of God.”
Behind the Pope’s gentle demeanor lies a steely determination. When he emerged to speak to reporters on Tuesday night after spending the day at a papal retreat outside Rome, he wanted to send a message and called for an “Easter truce.” Leo has increasingly emerged as a leading voice for an end to the war, holding separate telephone conversations with the presidents of Israel and Ukraine on Good Friday and continuing his campaign for peace during Holy Week.
“The global destructiveness of this war chain is indicative of the illusions that led us to attack Iran. For disciples of the Prince of Peace, this chain of destructiveness and illusions has only one imperative: end this conflict now,” Cardinal Robert McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., told CNN in response to Leo’s Palm Sunday remarks. “I think what Pope Leo is saying is that we should be wary of assuming triumphantly that God is on our side even in morally unjust wars.”
McElroy, the author of a doctoral dissertation on moral norms in U.S. foreign policy, believes the Iran war does not follow Catholic teachings about “just war,” which sets standards for morally justified conflict. U.S. Military Archbishop Timothy Broglio agrees. He said in a CBS interview to be aired on Easter Sunday that Iran is “making threats with nuclear weapons, but making up for those threats before they actually materialize.”
Leo’s first Holy Week and Easter celebrations since his election last May will take place against the backdrop of war. In the meantime, the new pope has taken time to adjust to a role that has thrust him into the spotlight and a position he never expected. Conventional wisdom held that as long as the United States remained the world’s dominant power, no American could be elected pope.
However, after Pope Francis’ death, the church convened in 2025 to break with this trend by selecting Cardinal Robert Prevot as his successor. At a time when America’s role in the world was uncertain, the church turned to a prelate whose 20 years of experience in Peru made him a man with international experience, although not much involvement with the United States.
Leo’s selection mirrors that of Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian elected in 450 years and the first Polish-born Pope. He became pope in 1978 at the height of the Cold War. Some see similarities between Pope John Paul II’s opposition to the Iraq war in 2003 and Leo’s comments about Iran.
“The last time a pope spoke with such urgency against war was St. John Paul II, prior to the Iraq war,” said Sohrab Ahmari, a conservative Iranian-American columnist and author who converted to Catholicism in 2016. Ahmari told CNN that, just as in the time of John Paul II, some Catholic supporters of Trump are “obscuring” Leo’s teachings and doctrines while the pope’s warnings are being ignored. Please oppose it. Mr. Ahmari called the war “patently unjust.”
At 70 years old, Leo has time on his hands, and his pontificate is likely to outlast the current US administration. As the one-year anniversary of his election approaches, he is emerging as a calm but firm voice in turbulent times.
