How the First American Pope Became the World's Most Watched Peace Advocate

Pope Leo XIV is an American at the head of an institution criticizing American military policy. Here is the extraordinary position he occupies and how he is managing it.

The specific theological and institutional challenge that Pope Leo XIV faces is unlike anything in modern papal history: he is the first American pope, leading an institution that has consistently opposed the US-Iranian war that his home country is conducting, speaking for 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide including substantial populations in the countries being bombed, while simultaneously being the figurehead of a church that has significant political relationships with the US government that requires careful management.

His Palm Sunday homily managed these tensions with extraordinary precision. The Isaiah quotation — 'Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood' — is directed at 'those who wage war' without specification. In the international media coverage, the quotation was read as directed at the US, at Israel, at Iran, at Russia — all of whom can be described as waging war in some dimension. Each reading is accurate. The genius of the formulation is that it says everything simultaneously while targeting no one explicitly.

Leo's March 1 social media post — his first public statement after the Iran war began on February 28 — said: 'Stability and peace are not achieved through mutual threats, nor through the use of weapons, which sow destruction, suffering, and death, but only through reasonable, sincere, and responsible dialogue.' This was posted the day after the US and Israel began strikes on Iran. It is, in diplomatic terms, a clear condemnation of military action. It names no one.

The Vatican's relationship with the US under Leo will be one of the more watched diplomatic dynamics of the current period. The Holy See maintains diplomatic relations with 183 countries and has historically used those relationships to maintain communication channels that conventional diplomacy cannot sustain — between Israel and Palestine, between Washington and Havana, between North and South Korea in specific historical moments. Those channels are potentially valuable in the Iran context. Whether they are being used, and to what effect, will not be visible in real time.