The first American pope in history has spent the last several months doing something no one in Rome has done quite like this before: publicly and repeatedly telling the President of the United States to stop a war. Pope Leo XIV — born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago — has gone from quiet Augustinian friar to the loudest voice on the planet calling for peace in the Middle East. And he’s not being subtle about it.
What started as careful diplomatic language in January 2026 escalated into blunt, fiery condemnations by Easter. Leo has called out Trump by name, rejected the religious justifications coming from the Pentagon, and told the world that God doesn’t take sides in bombing campaigns. For a pope who was described as “gentle and reserved” when he was elected in May 2025, the gloves came off fast.
It All Started With a 43-Minute Speech in January
On January 9, 2026, Leo stood before ambassadors from 184 countries and delivered his first major “state of the world” address. He spoke for 43 minutes, almost entirely in English, and didn’t mince words. “War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading,” he said. He told the assembled diplomats that the post-World War II principle — the one that said countries can’t just use force to violate another nation’s borders — had been “completely undermined.”
This was less than a week after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in a military raid. Leo didn’t name the U.S. directly in that speech, but he talked about “escalating tensions” in the Caribbean and called for respect for the will of the Venezuelan people. He cited Saint Augustine — the founder of his own religious order — and compared the current moment to the chaos of the fifth century. Migration, a shifting world order, empires in flux. He saw the parallels and wanted everyone else to see them too.
Then the Iran War Exploded Everything
On March 1, 2026, Leo addressed the world from St. Peter’s Square with a tone that was several notches more urgent. Hours earlier, U.S. officials had confirmed that a joint Israeli-American attack killed Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The strike happened while negotiations between the countries were still ongoing. Iran responded with drones and ballistic missiles aimed at Israel and U.S. military targets across five Gulf States and Jordan.
Leo said the world faced “the possibility of a tragedy of enormous proportions.” He issued what he called “a heartfelt appeal to assume the moral responsibility of halting the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss.” Meanwhile, Trump was on Truth Social doing the opposite, posting in all caps: “THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT, HOWEVER, BECAUSE IF THEY DO, WE WILL HIT THEM WITH A FORCE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!” Iran’s president called the killing of Khamenei “an open war against Muslims.” The U.N. Secretary General called for an immediate stop to the fighting. And here was the pope, an American citizen, telling the government of his own country it was heading toward catastrophe.
Palm Sunday Became a Direct Confrontation
By late March, Leo dropped the diplomatic hedging entirely. On Palm Sunday — March 29, 2026 — he stood before tens of thousands in St. Peter’s Square and dedicated his entire homily to rejecting the idea that God supports any side in a war. “Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” he said. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
This wasn’t abstract theology. It was a direct response to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who had been openly invoking his evangelical Christian faith to justify the conflict and casting the U.S. as a Christian nation vanquishing its foes. Hegseth had prayed at the Pentagon for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” and asked God to “let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness.” Leo’s message was clear: That’s not how this works. You don’t get to put God’s name on a bombing campaign.
That same Palm Sunday, something else happened that got less attention but carried weight. Jerusalem police prevented the Latin Patriarchate’s top Catholic leaders from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified. It was reportedly the first time in centuries that church leaders were blocked from celebrating Palm Sunday there.
He Named Trump Directly at Castel Gandolfo
Two days later, on March 31, Leo spoke to journalists at Castel Gandolfo — the papal villa outside Rome — and did something popes almost never do. He mentioned the president by name. “I’m told that President Trump recently stated that he would like to end the war,” Leo said. “Hopefully he’s looking for an off-ramp. Hopefully he’s looking for a way to decrease the amount of violence, of bombing, which would be a significant contribution to removing the hatred that’s being created.”
He also announced he would personally carry the Cross during the Good Friday Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum, calling it “an important sign because of what the Pope represents: a spiritual leader in today’s world.” And he mentioned an upcoming trip to Spain in June 2026 — his first visit there in over 40 years. But the Trump remarks were the headline. A sitting pope, an American one at that, publicly urging the American president to find a way out of a war the Vatican clearly believed never should have started.
“God Does Not Bless Any Conflict”
Leo kept going into April. On April 10, speaking to bishops of the Chaldean Catholic Church — an Eastern Rite church representing over a million Aramaic-speaking Christians from Iraq — he said that no cause can justify the spilling of innocent blood. “God does not bless any conflict,” he told them. Whoever claims to follow Christ “never stands on the side of those who yesterday wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”
That same week, Leo called Trump’s threat to “annihilate Iranian civilization” both “unacceptable” and “immoral.” The Vatican was also dealing with reports of a tense meeting between its outgoing ambassador to Washington, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, and U.S. Undersecretary Elbridge Colby at the Pentagon back in January. Both sides denied any hostility. The Vatican called it “regular duties.” The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See issued a thank-you note for the clarification. Diplomacy was straining, even if nobody wanted to say so publicly.
The Easter Vigil and the “Delusion of Omnipotence”
The night before Easter, April 11, Leo held a Prayer Vigil and Rosary for Peace at St. Peter’s Basilica. He sat on a white throne to the side of the altar, wearing his red cape and liturgical stole, rosary in hand. In the pews sat the Archbishop of Tehran. The United States sent only its deputy chief of mission — not the ambassador. Leo declared: “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!”
He warned that humanity had become “severely destabilized” by a “delusion of omnipotence” that was growing “increasingly unpredictable and aggressive.” He condemned “continuous violations of international law” — a phrase everyone understood to mean both the Iran war and the Venezuela operation. He said he receives countless letters from children in war zones describing “the horror and inhumanity of actions that some adults boast of with pride.”
His First Easter Morning as Pope
On Easter Sunday, April 5 (the Urbi et Orbi address) and again throughout Holy Week, Leo hammered the same message. “Let those who have weapons lay them down!” he said from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue!” He warned that the world was “growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent.”
He quoted his predecessor, Pope Francis — who died on Easter Monday 2025, the day after his last public appearance — saying: “What a great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day.” Thousands attended in person. Millions watched on screens around the world.
Why This Pope Is Different
The thing that makes all of this so unusual isn’t just what Leo is saying — it’s who he is. He’s from Chicago. He’s an American citizen. His country is waging a war he’s publicly condemning, week after week, in the strongest possible terms. As one analysis put it, he and Trump are the two most visible American leaders on the world stage right now, and they couldn’t be further apart.
Leo’s election in May 2025 broke a centuries-old assumption that an American could never be pope — partly because U.S. power was considered too dominant for the role to feel impartial. But Leo had spent two decades working in Peru, which made him less associated with American politics. His election drew comparisons to John Paul II in 1978 — the first non-Italian pope in 450 years, chosen during the Cold War to send a message.
Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Archbishop of Washington, D.C., said the Iran war “does not comply” with Catholic teaching on just war. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who oversees U.S. military services, acknowledged that while Iran posed a nuclear concern, the preemptive nature of the attack was “morally problematic.” Even inside the American Catholic establishment, the war didn’t have theological cover.
Leo isn’t playing politics. He’s doing something harder. He’s telling a wartime president — from the same country he was born in — that what’s happening is wrong, that God’s name doesn’t belong on it, and that the world is watching a slow-motion disaster unfold. Whether anyone with the power to change course is actually listening is another question entirely.
