Two months after rejecting an appeal from exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to intercede on behalf of Iran’s persecuted Christians, Pope Leo XIV has issued a subtle rebuke censuring the U.S.-Israel strike on Tehran’s theocracy.
“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,” Leo declared in his March 1, 2026, Angelus address.
Speaking from his window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, the pontiff called for the resumption of diplomacy, warning of an apocalyptic “tragedy of immense proportions” and urging all parties to halt “the spiral of violence before it becomes an unbridgeable chasm.”
The pontiff called for the resumption of diplomacy, warning of an apocalyptic “tragedy of immense proportions.”
Interpreting the papal statement as an appeasement of the Iranian regime, hundreds pilloried the pope on social media for failing to condemn Iran’s massacre of over 30,000 pro-democracy protestors on January 8–9, 2026. The Center for Human Rights in Iran reported the arrests of over 53,000 people, including 555 children.
“Pope Leo makes no reference to the Iranian regime’s cold-blooded slaughter of thousands of its citizens,” Damian Thompson, associate editor of The Spectator, wrote. Thompson, a Catholic journalist who typically supports Leo, noted that the Catholic left also did not receive the clear-cut condemnation of President Donald Trump they had been anticipating.
“Instead of drawing on Church doctrine, the Vatican is speaking like a Kantian globalist NGO, carefully aligned with the European left, applying only to Western countries the most exquisitely scrupulous, Utopian moral standards—which it fails to apply to non-Western countries,” John Zmirak, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism, explained.
“This isn’t Catholic moral reasoning, but weaponized white guilt—the luxury worldview of our fat, sterile, cowardly elites. If I were an Iranian Christian enduring that country’s evil regime, I’d feel utterly betrayed,” Zmirak lamented.
Leo has “completely ignored” Iran’s repression “as if it does not exist,” Vaticanista Franca Giansoldati earlier warned. “Strangely, there is not a word about Iran, not even an indirect mention, hidden between the lines.”
“This isn’t Catholic moral reasoning, but weaponized white guilt—the luxury worldview of our fat, sterile, cowardly elites.”
Leo’s silence on Iran “seems to follow the very cautious and fearful line of his predecessor Bergoglio, who always pretended not to see even the long trail of blood of thousands and thousands of girls, mostly students, brutally massacred, raped, often hanged by the Ayatollah regime in recent years just for removing their veils,” Giansoldati stressed.
On Christmas Eve, Iran’s exiled crown prince wrote to Leo, urging him to use “diplomatic channels” to “speak publicly” on behalf of Iran’s persecuted Christians. Pahlavi detailed the plight of Muslim converts to Christianity, including “baptized Christians seeking full communion with the Catholic Church.”
“In 2024 alone, Christian converts in Iran received a combined 263 years in prison and thirty-seven years in internal exile for ‘crimes’ directly related to the practice of their faith,” Pahlavi wrote, stressing that “this is nearly a sixfold increase in sentencing length compared to 2023.”
A 2020 survey by the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN) estimates a figure of 1.2 million converts across Iran. “To say a spiritual revolution is happening in Iran is quite an understatement,” the Rev. Sasan Tavassoli, a convert in Iran, commented. “This is a total failure of the regime’s attempt at indoctrination of the generation since the Islamic Revolution.”
While diplomatic relations with Iran have remained strong, Vatican-United States and Vatican-Israel diplomatic ties have deteriorated.
On January 9, 2026, Mohammad Hossein Mokhtari, Iran’s ambassador to the Holy See, participated in the papal exchange of greetings to the diplomatic corps. The pope remained silent on Tehran’s repression. The Vatican’s only response to the crisis came in an informal comment from its Secretary of State. Days later, on the sidelines of a liturgical celebration, Cardinal Pietro Parolin asked how, in a Middle Eastern country, “it is possible to attack one’s own people.”
While diplomatic relations with Iran have remained strong, Vatican-United States and Vatican-Israel diplomatic ties have deteriorated during Trump’s second term in the White House due to the Catholic hierarchy’s criticism of U.S. policies and Israel’s response to Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
The Holy See established diplomatic relations with Tehran in 1966. In contrast, the Vatican only established diplomatic ties with Israel in 1993. Given its diplomatic history, the Vatican “will likely not take a clear stance on events in Iran,” EWTN Vatican correspondent Andrea Gagliarducci concluded.
