If you’ve read a report that Pope Leo condemned the Trump administration for the strikes on Iran, you were misinformed.
When the Pope spoke at his Sunday audience, he certainly disapproved of the military action. But he chose his words carefully, and never actually mentioned Trump or the US or Israel. The Pope used diplomatic language. When reporters tried to reduce his few sentences to a single headline, they were drawing their own inferences.
I make this point not to defend Trump’s military adventure— which I have no interest in defending— but to call attention to a danger that arises whenever the secular media report on papal statements.
Here’s an important rule of thumb: Whenever you see a report on a statement by the Pope, look for quotation marks. If the report is accurate (and don’t be too quick to take that for granted), anything inside the quotation marks is what the Pope actually said. (Whether it’s taken out of context is another question.) Anything that’s not inside the quote is the reporter’s interpretation of what the Pope said.
You may, of course, trust the reporter. But if you care enough to spend an extra minute, go to the Vatican web site and find the actual statement.
Here, for example, is what Pope Leo said on Sunday about the Iran war, in the official Vatican translation:
I am following with deep concern what is happening in the Middle East and in Iran during this tumultuous time. 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.
Faced with the possibility of a tragedy of immense proportions, I make a heartfelt appeal to all the parties involved to assume the moral responsibility of halting the spiral of violence before it becomes an unbridgeable chasm. May diplomacy regain its proper role, and may the well-being of peoples, who yearn for peaceful existence founded on justice, be upheld. And let us continue to pray for peace.
if one was following the statements from President Trump leading up to this action one would recall that he tried dialogue. He said that IF the Iranian regime refused to negotiate, he would take more severe steps. One party, it seems, in this situation was willing to negotiate. One was not.
And while caveats are being given regarding reporting every statement the pope makes, I try to be sure to note that BOTH "left" and "right" pundits are guilty of extrapolating nonsense from papal statements. There are JH Westen and James Martin SJ takes that I dismiss right off the bat.
I hope there is not A strong correlation between dialoguing with the Mullahs and dialoguing with the Vatican in terms of how much good it does.