Does Pope Leo XIV Know the Way to Peace?

Pope Leo xiv, the first United States-born leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics, has been sharply attacking the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. On Sunday night, President Trump hit back with a Truth Social post calling the pope “weak on crime,” “terrible for foreign policy” and a “very liberal person” who is “catering to the radical left.” He defended U.S. and Israeli military action against Iran, accusing the pope of being weak on nuclear weapons and stating, “I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo.”

On Monday, Leo responded while aboard the papal plane en route to Algeria by saying that he has “no fear” of the Trump administration and will continue speaking out against war and promoting peaceful dialogue and relationships among nations. He quoted Jesus Christ as saying, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

On the surface, the pope’s appeal to Scripture sounds noble. Who could oppose peace? Yet the Bible offers this sobering diagnosis: “The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace” (Isaiah 59:8).

Once again, the papacy is manipulating the spiritual power of the gospel to increase the temporal power of the Vatican.

Pope Leo has repeatedly criticized military action and threats. He urges leaders to reject war, turn toward reconciliation, and choose the “table of dialogue” over rearmament. He emphasizes that Jesus is the Prince of Peace who rejects violence and does not heed the prayers of those who wage it.

Is he right? Does he speak for Jesus Christ? Does being a “peacemaker” really mean one must negotiate with terrorists and regimes that sponsor violence?

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God,” Jesus Christ said in Matthew 5:9. Yet He also told the parable of the strong man who is “fully armed” and “guards his own house” (Luke 11:21; New International Version), showing that true peace requires strength and vigilance against evil.

This illustrates that one does not need to be a pacifist to be a genuine peacemaker. In fact, many great men of God in the Bible, including King David, established and maintained peace in their realms by decisively waging war against enemies who sought to destroy their people. If King David were alive today, you can be sure his response to the terrorist regime in Iran would be a lot more like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response than it would be to Pope Leo’s plea for negotiation.

Scripture reveals that Jesus is the Son of David (Matthew 9:27; 15:22; 20:30; 21:9; 22:42) and the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). When he returns, he will “judge and make war” (Revelation 19:11). A sharp sword proceeds from His mouth to smite the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron (verse 15). The Kingdom of God, in other words, will be literal, and it will literally be a conquering kingdom.

Pope Leo xiv speaks of a kingdom with “no sword, no vengeance,” but Scripture shows that the Kingdom of God arrives with divine authority that first puts down rebellion. Only then can authentic peace flourish.

Herbert W. Armstrong taught this truth for decades. In his landmark book, Mystery of the Ages, he wrote: “But Christ and the governing Kingdom of God, then set up as the governing Family, will bring about the coming utopia by two basic courses of action. 1) All crime and organized rebellion will be put down by force—divine supernatural force. 2) Christ will then set His hand to reeducate and to save or spiritually convert the world.”

This is the ultimate peace-through-strength strategy, enforced by divine power.

The law of God teaches us to be selfless and to treat others as we want to be treated (Matthew 7:12), but it does not teach us to weakly submit to evil people who would do us harm. Even Pope Leo acknowledges this principle, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church permits military force in legitimate self-defense. That’s to say nothing of the Vatican’s endorsement of military and other violence when it has been at the peak of its power throughout the past 2,000 years.

The head of the Vatican is intentionally advancing a certain agenda when he portrays the U.S. and Israel as shedding innocent blood and Iran as the victim. The dispute between President Trump and the pope is not a debate about war versus pacifism. It is fundamentally a conflict between a president who stands with Israel and a pope who sides with the Palestinians.

You can’t have peace with people who want to kill you! That is why the first thing Jesus Christ will do when He returns to establish peace is wage a brutal war.

God told the Prophet Jeremiah about a future perilous time when people say, “Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11).

Compare these assessments of peace with my father’s assessment in the latest issue of the Philadelphia Trumpet. (Order your subscription here, completely free of cost of follow-up.) He wrote in “World War III Will Start With Iran”:

Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons, mount them on ballistic missiles, and fire them at Israel. It wants to wipe Israel off the map and, if it could, the U.S., too! It continually threatens to kill Americans, including the president. Iran is the main source of terrorism in the region and has brutally suppressed its own people. Can you imagine what it would do if it got nuclear weapons?

I am glad to see Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu express such determination to prevent that from happening. But it also concerns me that President Trump has been so intent on trying to get the Iranians to negotiate an end to their nuclear program.

Do the president and his officials realize what kind of force they are up against? Iran is not a normal power. The Iranian ideology is evil through and through. No other nation matches its fanatical thinking and extreme religious beliefs. These leaders believe they have a religious duty to bring upon the world a nuclear cataclysm so their messiah can return!

No words will stop this king of terror.

Ultimately, because of national sins, America and Israel will not succeed in fully defeating Iran or preventing the outbreak of World War iii on their own. Jesus Christ will have to intervene to fight the forces of evil at His return. Even so, President Trump’s and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s determination to defend the world from the radical Islamist terrorist regime in Iran demonstrates greater realism and moral clarity than that of Pope Leo xiv. And the Vatican’s selective use of Scripture reveals its ultimate agenda: to first weaken the U.S. and Israel before drastically changing tone and using Scripture to justify far greater violence, just as it has throughout its blood-soaked history.