War in Iran and Catholic Social Teaching

This episode is about the war in Iran and what Catholic Social Teaching has to say about the war, focusing on news and reactions from February 28 to April 8, 2026.

Here are references and notes:

1. Here's what the Trump administration has said motivated the strikes.
2. Persons killed and injured in Iran and US casualties through early April 2026
3. Persons displaced by the war in Iran
4. Estimated US expenditure on war through early April 2026
5. Cardinal Parolin: Preventive wars risk setting the world ablaze - March 4, 2026
6. Cardinal Pizzaballa: Using God's name to justify war is 'gravest sin'
7. Pope at Palm Sunday Mass: ‘Jesus does not listen to prayers of those who wage war’
8. Catechism of the Catholic Church – Safeguarding Peace and Avoiding War – see section 2309 for just war criteria
9. Cardinal McElroy says U.S. entry into war with Iran ‘not morally legitimate,’ citing Catholic just war teaching
10. Articles from Catholic commentators supporting the war:  A Cautious Case for the Iran War by Philip Primeau and Contra Pope Leo, Catholic Just War Doctrine Supports Iran Strikes by Shannon Walsh & Sean Patrick Calabria
11. The Just War Tradition and the Iran War: A Catholic Examination for American Conservatives by Will Wright - a Catholic conservative makes the case that the Iran war does not meet just war criteria
12. Pope Leo: The threat against the entire Iranian people is unacceptable April 7, 2026
13. Statement from Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the USCCB
14. Podcast website with full transcripts

Transcript

Welcome to “Headline News and Catholic Social Teaching,” where we take a brief look at stories in the news, not from a left or right political perspective, but through the lens of Catholic Social Teaching.  I’m your host, Tom Mulhern, and my hope, as always, is that this podcast will help us grow in our love of God and love of our neighbors.

This episode is about the war in Iran and what Catholic Social Teaching has to tell us about this war has filled the headlines for weeks.  The Iran war news story will obviously continue to develop after this episode is published, but I’ll be looking at events between February 28 and April 8, 2026, from the start of the bombing to the start of the temporary ceasefire.

So, on February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a joint bombing attack in Iran, killing the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and ending his 36-year rule.  A number of other Iranian senior officials and military leaders were also killed in the initial strikes.

In a show of support for Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon then launched rocket and drone strikes against Israel.  Israel has responded with a major offensive aimed at destroying Hezbollah’s infrastructure in Lebanon and securing Israel’s northern border.  The ensuing warfare has created a rapidly-deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, but I’m going to focus primarily on the war in Iran in this episode.

In Iran, in the days and weeks following the initial strikes, the US and Israel continued bombing targets throughout the country, and Iran retaliated by attacking Israel and by attacking US military installations and US allies in the Middle East.  Iran also effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global supplies of oil, fertilizer and other trade goods.

President Trump has justified the war by stating that Iran poses an “imminent threat” to the United States, and that the US has to eliminate that threat and prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. 

Following approximately 13,000 US air strikes in Iran during March and into April, in early April President Trump threatened that the United States would bomb every bridge and power plant in Iran, saying on April 7 that “an entire civilization will die tonight” unless Iran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

This threat was averted for the moment when Pakistan brokered a 2-week temporary cease fire, which started on April 8 and is in effect while I am preparing this episode.

To briefly summarize some of the costs of the war in Iran to date, the ​International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies says that at least 1,900 people have been killed and 20,000 injured in Iran.  The UN High Commission for Refugees estimates that there were up to 3.2 million people temporarily displaced within Iran as of mid-March 2026. US casualties include 13 US service members killed and 381 wounded.

The US has spent an estimated $25 billion dollars on the war in Iran through early April.  The Pentagon has requested an additional $200 billion dollars to support the war effort.  And, as anyone who has been to a gas station recently knows, the increase in oil prices caused by the war has had an immediate and worldwide impact on people’s lives and economic activity.

So, how does this war look through Catholic Social Teaching?  Well, simply stated, Pope Leo and other Catholic leaders have been speaking out against the war since it started.

The initial response to the war from the Vatican was a call for peace, an end to military action, and a return to dialogue and negotiation.  The Pope also expressed concern for the innocent victims of this and other wars, a concern that was brought into tragic focus when a school in Iran was mistakenly bombed and more than 165 civilians were killed, many of them children.  

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, on March 4 spoke to the lack of justification for “preventive war”, which lies at the heart of the US and Israel intentions in Iran:  here I’m quoting:  

If states were to be recognized as having a right to “preventive war,” according to their own criteria and without [an international] legal framework, the whole world would risk being set ablaze. This erosion of international law is truly worrying: justice has given way to force; the force of law has been replaced by the law of force, with the conviction that peace can arise only after the enemy has been annihilated.  End of quote.

Speaking on March 15, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, said the use of God’s name to justify war is a grave sin.  He pointed out that God is present with those who suffer and die in conflict, not with those who exploit religion for political ends.  He was responding in part to remarks by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who cited Psalm 144 during a March 10 Pentagon briefing,

Pope Leo shared similar thoughts in his homily on Palm Sunday, when he stated: “Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

But what about Catholic just war theory?  Articulated by St. Augustine and further developed by St. Thomas Aquinas and many other Catholic thinkers over the centuries, this is the idea that, in a fallen world, war can be considered just if it meets certain criteria.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 2309, spells out four strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force, all of which must be present for war to be just:

OK, quoting the four conditions from the Catechism:

- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

- there must be serious prospects of success;

- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.  End of quote.

In an interview published on March 12 in the Catholic Standard newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington DC, Cardinal Robert McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, cited just war theory to conclude that the US entry into the war in Iran was not morally legitimate.  There’s a link to the full interview in the notes.

It’s worth noting that Cardinal McElroy has a doctorate in political science from Stanford and a doctorate in moral theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University.  Other Catholic leaders have come to a similar conclusion, a conclusion that is implicit in Pope Leo’s comments on the war.

Now, I did find Catholic commentators who have made the case that the US-Israel war in Iran does meet the just war criteria.  I’ll put links in the notes and you can see for yourself what you think of their arguments in support of the war.   My impression is that they are well-reasoned arguments based on faulty premises, particularly with respect to the immediacy (or lack thereof) of the threat posed to the United States.  But you may find their arguments more compelling.

An article that I found more compelling on the just war question is one by Will Wright, a theologian and history teacher.  The article is titled “The Just War Tradition and the Iran War: A Catholic Examination for American Conservatives.”  A Catholic and a conservative who says he has voted for Donald Trump three times, Wright provides a thoughtful analysis of how the Iran war fails to meet just war criteria.  The link is in the notes, and I strongly encourage you to read it.

Any thought that this war might meet just war criteria was revealed to be misguided thinking when President Trump threatened to use force to end Iranian civilization.  As Pope Leo said in remarks on April 7, “Today, as we all know, there has also been this threat against the entire people of Iran. And this is truly unacceptable!”  

And Archbishop Paul Coakley, current president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, had this to say:  “The threat of destroying a whole civilization and the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure cannot be morally justified.”

Although some supporters have attempted to minimize the threats made by the President as a negotiating tactic that led to the ceasefire, this is at best inverted thinking.  The ceasefire didn’t occur because of any significant capitulation by Iran, it occurred because the US and Israel agreed to pause the bombing campaign in Iran for 2 weeks and attempt to engage in negotiations.  We all welcome the ceasefire and the attempted negotiations, but they don’t alter the immorality of threatening to end a civilization.

OK, I’d like to share a final prayer and wrap up.

So let us pray that the ceasefire holds, that our leaders will work for the common good of all peoples, and that peace can prevail.  And let us always remember that, whatever our political opinions, we do not ultimately place our trust in any earthly power, we put our trust in Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, who could have called on legions of angels to rescue him, but instead gave himself up to death on the cross to save us – not just some of us, but all of us.

Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of “Headline News and Catholic Social Teaching.”  If you found it worthwhile, I invite you to share it with others.  If you’d like to make a comment or send me a message or a question, there’s a link in the notes that will enable you to send a text message, and now you can also send me a voicemail message.

And I do hope that, in some small way, this episode might help us live our lives guided by the Holy Spirit through the teachings of the Church.  

Thank you for listening.