Pope Leo II launched the beginning of the holiest week on the Christian calendar with what is seen worldwide as a sharp attack on U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the right-wing Christian nationalist movement he is pushing.
The Pope said, “God refuses the prayers of leaders who have hands full of blood.” His remarks were seen as a sharp condemnation of Hegseth and a variety of other U.S. lawmakers and Christian nationalist leaders who use religious invocations to claim that the war on Iran is America doing the work of God.
“This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” Leo said to thousands of people attending his Palm Sunday mass at St. Peter’s Square. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
The Pope demanded an end to all military airstrikes on Iran. The bombings have been carried out for weeks by the Trump and Netanyahu regimes in the U.S. and Israel.
“Thousands of innocent people have been killed, and many others have been forced to abandon their homes,” Pope Leo said. “I renew my prayerful closeness to all those who have lost their loved ones in the attacks that have struck schools, hospitals, and residential areas.”
The Pope’s Palm Sunday remarks directly challenged what Hegseth said just four days earlier. The Defense Secretary offered his “prayers” at the Pentagon.
Hegseth called on his listeners to pray that God will support the mission of U.S. troops to “rain violence and death on the enemy.” He also asked God to guide American bullets straight into the bodies of their opponents, saying, “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.”
He prayed, “We ask these things in bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.”
Hegseth has previously organized “prayer meetings” at the Pentagon, which also call upon God to aid the U.S. war effort in Iran and elsewhere. Christian nationalist supporters of these actions have gone so far as to claim that U.S. wars are part of God’s plan to bring on the apocalypse, after which Christ will descend upon the Earth, and judge everyone, condemning all non-believers to Hell.
Hegseth has several tattoos featuring imagery associated with Christian nationalism, including a Jerusalem cross on his chest. That cross was carried by medieval European Crusaders who set out to kill followers of the Muslim religion.
Christian nationalists inject their racist views into U.S. politics wherever they can in an effort to move the political agenda to the right, critics charge. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has filed a lawsuit over Hegseth’s latest remarks and similar religious meetings hosted by Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
The group said the two officials abuse “the power of their government positions and taxpayer-funded resources to impose their preferred religion on federal workers.”
Rev. Primo Racimo, an Episcopal Church pastor at St. Margaret’s Church on the South Side of Chicago, the hometown of the Pope, said, “It is encouraging and invaluable to have someone from our city who has risen to such a high position in the Church take positions that are in the interest of all the people of the world.” He said the Pope follows a just tradition in the Church.
Father Primo mentioned St. Margaret of Scotland, the patron saint of his church. He noted that during her reign, her husband, the king, went off on the Crusades against Islam. While he was gone, Margaret opened the country’s jails, freeing those imprisoned for political and religious beliefs.
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