Pope urges U.S. and Iran to return to peace talks, condemns capital punishment

Pope Leo XIV urged the Unit­ed States and Iran to re­turn to talks to end the war Thurs­day and con­demned cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, in a wide-rang­ing press con­fer­ence en route home from his trip to Africa.

Leo al­so as­sert­ed that coun­tries have the right to con­trol their bor­ders but mustn’t treat mi­grants worse than “an­i­mals,” and lament­ed that the church’s moral­i­ty teach­ing is of­ten re­duced to sex­u­al is­sues.

On Iran, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and peace

Af­ter a trip that was dom­i­nat­ed by the very pub­lic back and forth be­tween Leo and U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump over the war, Leo urged the Unit­ed States and Iran to re­turn to ne­go­ti­a­tions.

He called for a new “cul­ture of peace” to re­place the re­course to vi­o­lence when­ev­er con­flicts arise.

He said the ques­tion wasn’t whether the Iran regime should change or not. “The ques­tion should be about how to pro­mote the val­ues we be­lieve in with­out the deaths of so many in­no­cents.”

He re­vealed that he car­ries with him the pho­to of a Mus­lim Lebanese boy who had been killed in Is­rael’s re­cent war with Hezbol­lah. The boy had been pho­tographed hold­ing a sign wel­com­ing the pope when he vis­it­ed Lebanon last year.

“As a pas­tor I can­not be in fa­vor of war,” he told re­porters aboard his plane. “I would like to en­cour­age every­one to find re­spons­es that come from a cul­ture of peace and not ha­tred and di­vi­sion.”

Asked if he con­demned Iran’s re­cent ex­e­cu­tions, Leo said he con­demned “all ac­tions that are un­just” and in­clud­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the list.

“I con­demn the tak­ing of peo­ple’s lives. I con­demn cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. I be­lieve hu­man life is to be re­spect­ed and that all peo­ple from con­cep­tion to nat­ur­al (death), their lives should be re­spect­ed and pro­tect­ed.

“So when a regime, when a coun­try takes de­ci­sions which take away the lives of oth­er peo­ple un­just­ly, then ob­vi­ous­ly that is some­thing that should be con­demned,” he said.

Pope Fran­cis changed the church’s so­cial teach­ing to de­clare cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment im­moral in all cas­es.

On mi­gra­tion and the rights of states

Leo af­firmed the right of coun­tries to im­pose im­mi­gra­tion con­trols on their bor­ders and ac­knowl­edged that un­con­trolled mi­gra­tion had cre­at­ed sit­u­a­tions “that are some­times more un­just in the place where they ar­rive than from where they left.”

“I per­son­al­ly be­lieve that a state has the right to im­pose rules for its fron­tiers,” he said. “But say­ing this, I ask: ‘What are we do­ing in the wealth­i­er coun­tries to change the sit­u­a­tion in poor­er coun­tries’ to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties so that peo­ple aren’t com­pelled to leave?”

Re­gard­less, he said mi­grants are hu­man be­ings and de­serve to be re­spect­ed in their hu­man dig­ni­ty and not be treat­ed “worse than house pets, an­i­mals.”

On LGBTQ+ bless­ings and moral­i­ty

Leo was asked about the re­cent in­vi­ta­tion by Car­di­nal Rein­hard Marx, arch­bish­op of Mu­nich, for the priests and pas­toral work­ers in his arch­dio­ce­ses to adopt a set of guide­lines for­mal­iz­ing and rit­u­al­iz­ing bless­ings of same-sex cou­ples.

The guide­lines were ap­proved last year by a con­tro­ver­sial Ger­man church gov­ern­ing body made up of the Ger­man bish­ops’ con­fer­ence and a Catholic lay group that has been work­ing to have a greater say in church de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

The Vat­i­can in 2023 al­lowed for such bless­ings, but it made clear that they were not to be for­mal­ized or rit­u­al­ized. The Vat­i­can al­lowed them to be of­fered spon­ta­neous­ly and in­for­mal­ly, as a priest gives a fi­nal bless­ing to all peo­ple at the end of Mass.

Leo said the Holy See had made clear to Ger­man bish­ops that “we do not agree with the for­mal­ized bless­ing” of gay cou­ples or cou­ples in oth­er “ir­reg­u­lar sit­u­a­tions.”

The Vat­i­can’s 2023 de­c­la­ra­tion al­low­ing an in­for­mal bless­ing, pro­mul­gat­ed with vir­tu­al­ly no con­sul­ta­tion out­side the Vat­i­can, sharply di­vid­ed the church, with African bish­ops de­liv­er­ing a con­ti­nent-wide dis­sent and re­fus­ing to im­ple­ment it. Ho­mo­sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty is crim­i­nal­ized in sev­er­al African coun­tries.

Asked how he would han­dle keep­ing the church uni­fied over such a di­vi­sive is­sue, Leo spoke broad­ly about how cul­ture war ques­tions of sex­u­al moral­i­ty had dom­i­nat­ed church dis­course, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the West, far too much.

“I think it’s very im­por­tant to un­der­stand that the uni­ty or di­vi­sion of the church should not re­volve around sex­u­al mat­ters,” he said. “We tend to think that when the church is talk­ing about moral­i­ty, that the on­ly is­sue of moral­i­ty is sex­u­al.

“And in re­al­i­ty, I be­lieve that there are much greater and more im­por­tant is­sues such as jus­tice, equal­i­ty, free­dom of men and women, free­dom of re­li­gion that would all take pri­or­i­ty be­fore that par­tic­u­lar is­sue.”

The com­ment was sig­nif­i­cant be­cause it sug­gest­ed that even though he is Amer­i­can, Leo be­lieves the church in the U.S. and the West has ex­ces­sive­ly re­duced its moral teach­ings to re­volve on­ly around sex at the ex­pense of oth­er press­ing is­sues.

A pope who keeps on eye on how he’s be­ing cov­ered

His­to­ry’s first U.S. pope showed him­self keen­ly aware of how his Africa trip had been re­port­ed and in­ter­pret­ed, in­clud­ing about his some­times-tame pub­lic ad­dress­es to African lead­ers who are ac­cused of cor­rup­tion or au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism.

With a few no­table ex­cep­tions, Leo kept his po­lit­i­cal re­marks to the lead­ers large­ly diplo­mat­ic, us­ing a lan­guage of en­cour­age­ment and sub­tle mes­sag­ing rather than head­line-grab­bing con­dem­na­tions.

He al­so al­lowed some of the cir­cum­stances of his vis­it to speak loud­er than his words: a chore­o­graphed song and dance rou­tine by pris­on­ers in a coun­try known for gross hu­man rights abus­es, or the ex­trav­a­gant lux­u­ry of a pres­i­dent’s home­town in a coun­try where more than half the pop­u­la­tion lives in pover­ty.

Leo in­sist­ed that his pri­ma­ry rea­son for vis­it­ing Al­ge­ria, Cameroon, An­go­la and Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea was as a pas­tor, to ac­com­pa­ny his flock in their faith.

He added that the Holy See can some­times achieve more be­hind the scenes via its diplo­mat­ic work, in­clud­ing through the re­lease of po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers, than with “great procla­ma­tions crit­i­ciz­ing, judg­ing or con­demn­ing.” —ABOARD THE PA­PAL PLANE (AP)

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Sto­ry by NICOLE WIN­FIELD | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Moni­ka Pron­czuk con­tributed to this re­port.