As far as showdowns between popes and secular leaders go, President Trump versus Pope Leo hardly rates.

Leo hasn’t forced Trump to come see him and stand for three days in the snow, the way Pope Gregory VII did to Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, in 1077. Nor has he issued an interdict, a tactic favored by Pope Innocent III, against the United States.

On the other hand, Trump hasn’t sacked Rome and forced the pope to submit to his will, in a repeat of Emperor Charles V’s 16th-century gambit against Pope Clement VII.

It’s still been a remarkably testy exchange between Leo and Trump over the Iran war. The president of the United States — stung by the pontiff’s criticisms of his decision to launch the war and his ensuing rhetoric — has denounced Leo in his characteristic terms, all but saying that His Holiness “doesn’t have what it takes.”

It’s easy, meanwhile, to interpret Leo as taking veiled shots at Trump. “Enough with the idolatry of self and money!” is not an unusual sentiment for a Holy Father, but who can be certain he didn’t have our gilt president in mind when he said it in a homily the other day?

A pope who doesn’t rebuke a president of the United States for threatening to bring a foreign civilization to an end isn’t doing his job, yet it’s important to understand that the Bible is not an injunction for pacifism and that it doesn’t entail a condemnation of the Iran war.

The Bible has a realistic view of the inevitability of human conflict. As Ecclesiastes says, there is “a time for war, and a time for peace.” In the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, it is often a time for war. The key question is whether or not a war is righteous — the difference between Israel, say, prevailing in the Battle of Deborah, or seeing the Babylonians destroy Jerusalem.

On Palm Sunday, Leo cited Isaiah 1:15 for the proposition that God doesn’t listen to the prayers of those who wage war: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.” The context of this verse, though, is the injustice and corruption of the people of Judah — in other words, their self-abasement.

It makes no sense, as a broader matter, to cite Isaiah as an injunction against waging war or evidence that God pays no heed to the prayers of those who fight. Later in the book, King Hezekiah of Judah prays for God’s help stopping an Assyrian army threatening Jerusalem, and 185,000 Assyrian soldiers are struck down.

Jesus preaches love and mercy, of course, but that is not a warrant for pacifism. The great Christian thinkers Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas gave us just war theory, reconciling Christian ethics with the existence of evil in the world and the necessity of warfare. According to this view, which is embraced by the Catholic Church, a war can be fought only for a just cause and has to be waged in keeping with moral standards minimizing harm to civilians.

Leo has wrongly made it sound as though no war can possibly be just, and regardless, his opposition to the Iran war isn’t dispositive or binding on anyone else.

The pontiff might consider that Trump first talked of attacking Iran when the regime was in the midst of slaughtering thousands of protesters in the streets, and if the current government fell and gave way to one with more respect for the rights of its people, it would be a boon to Iranians and a large step toward a safer and more peaceful region.

Trump’s wild threats are understandably anathema to Pope Leo, but they don’t define the Iran war or change the fact that the Bible portrays warfare as a tragic fact of human existence. Yes, as Isaiah says, they shall beat their swords into plowshares, but not yet.

© 2026 by King Features Syndicate