Pope warns of ‘unbridgeable chasm’ of violence in the Middle East

‘We must pray intensely for peace, live in unity and refuse the temptation to hurt others,’ Leo told children on a visit to a Roman parish. ‘Violence is never the right choice.’

The Pope warned of “the possibility of a tragedy of immense proportions” in a plea for peace after US and Israeli attacks on Iran.

“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,” Pope Leo said in his address after the Angelus on Sunday.

He was speaking the day after strikes on Tehran killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior figures in the Islamic regime, while retaliatory strikes hit targets in Israel and across the Middle East.

Iranian cities suffered further bombing on Sunday, with the authorities reporting scores of deaths.

Pope Leo urged “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,” he said, asking all people to pray for peace during “this tumultuous time”.

Later on Sunday, the Pope visited the Church of the Ascencion of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Rome’s Quarticciolo district where he addressed children of the parish, repeating his appeal for peace.

“We must pray intensely for peace, live in unity and refuse the temptation to hurt others,” he said. “Violence is never the right choice.”

Bishop Aldo Berardi, the apostolic vicar of Northern Arabia, said the attacks had “unleased even more hatred and vengeance”.

“When such great violence is accumulated, when the dignity and self-respect of peoples are struck and when attacks are carried out violently, the response is equally violent,” he told Vatican News.

The bishop reported that he had asked all clergy and religious in his vicariate, which spans Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, to take shelter during Iranian strikes and to follow local security requirements – including church closures.

“Of course, we enter into an abyss and a spiral, and we do not know where it may lead us. There is a risk that we will be drawn into a spiral of vengeance and reciprocal violence that can sweep us away,” he said.

“We must pray that peace may be restored and that we are not swept up in this spiral. If each side enters the battle because it feels attacked, there is a risk that the entire region will explode.”

The Archbishop of Tehran-Ispahan Cardinal Dominique Mathieu OFM Conv, who has headed the Latin Church in Iran since 2021, did not make a public response to the violence over the weekend.

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