By: Cliff Kincaid
Justin McLellan, the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter (NCR), is a very clever reporter and apologist for Pope Leo, but not clever enough to deceive his readers who know better. He claims that President Donald Trump has made a “false claim” that Pope Leo XIV supports Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon. What Trump has actually said, when you take the minute or so to analyze his statements in context, is that Leo’s opposition to the U.S. war on Iran constitutes the acceptance of Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. That is a reasonable interpretation of Leo’s position on the war.
Perhaps I missed it, but did Leo ever thank Trump for eliminating Iran’s nuclear weapons capability? I can’t find any record of such a statement.
We are told that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Leo had an “exchange of views” during his trip to the Vatican. Let’s examine what that means.
“The pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and I don’t think that’s very good,” said the President. Trump’s statement is his own summary of what Leo’s position would mean for America and the world.
In response, Leo said, “For years, the Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons, so there is no doubt on that point.”
Really? This means that Leo opposed the U.S. dropping nuclear bombs on Japan to end World War II. Would he have preferred a prolonged war that would have cost even more American lives?
If the Church is against “all nuclear weapons,” where is its condemnation of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons?
If he is against nuclear weapons, perhaps he should criticize the Soviets for stealing the atom bomb secrets from the American Manhattan Project and the Red Chinese, who stole those secrets from Los Alamos.
Arms Control “Expert” Pope Leo
Nobody expects that Leo, a religious man, would say out loud and directly that Iran should have a nuclear weapon. Hence, when Trump pushes back on that claim, he is direct, but his meaning is clear for anybody who takes the time to understand the president’s position and the point he is making.
McLellan is not somebody who wants to make things clear. Instead, he is determined to make Trump look like the devil and Leo, the so-called Vicar of Christ on earth, a saint. This is the current position of the Vatican and the U.S. Catholic hierarchy.
In another formulation of his attempted smear, he wrote that, “Leo has repeatedly called for an end to the war in Iran and has condemned the use, development and possession of nuclear weapons in all forms.”
Leo is the angel, we are led to believe, and Trump is the devil. Leo’s pie-in-the-sky pronouncement ignores the activities of enemies who develop nuclear weapons in secret and use or threaten to use them to advance international communism and global Islam.
The link in that article went to Leo’s statement that, “May the nuclear threat never again dictate the future of humanity.”
This is a fascinating comment. Again, this is a direct criticism of America for ending World War II. Also, does Leo oppose Israel’s nuclear arsenal, constructed for self-defense purposes to deter another holocaust?
Leo Silent on Iran’s Nuclear Build-up
Where is Leo’s condemnation of a nuclear-armed Iran designed by mullahs to carry out “Death to America” and “Death to Israel?”
Or does Leo consider Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons to be equivalent to Israel’s? If so, this reveals the Vatican’s anti-Semitism.
A liberal peacenik is quoted as saying, “The pope is the one who is clear-eyed and understands the need for preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but also the appropriate means for pursuing that goal. And the use of military force is not the appropriate means, probably because it’s immoral and it’s also likely to be counterproductive.” (emphasis added).
Therefore, Leo does oppose the Iran war as a long overdue response to eliminate that nuclear capability in Iran. Leo apparently favors the Obama approach of “negotiations” involving cash payments to Iran. That sounds like appeasement, the kind that led to Hitler’s invasion of Europe and the first holocaust.
If you think I am being harsh, consider the NCR report that “Leo pressed nations to renew the New START Treaty, the 2010 agreement between the U.S. and Russia, the world’s top nuclear powers, that placed limits on each country’s strategic nuclear weapon arsenals.”
Leo is Wrong Again
That was a flawed treaty, also negotiated by Obama.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio observes that “Russia ceased implementing the New START treaty in 2023, after flouting its terms for years.” The U.S. withdrew, and the treaty expired.
He added, “Our desire to reduce global nuclear threats is genuine, but we will not accept terms that harm the United States or ignore noncompliance in the pursuit of an agreement for agreement’s sake.”
Who made Leo an arms control expert?
Has Leo specifically condemned Iran for developing nuclear weapons? I have yet to find such a statement. In opposing the war, therefore, Leo acquiesces in Iran’s development of such weapons. That is the Trump explanation, and it is not a false claim.
When we analyze McLellan’s background, we find that “Prior to joining NCR, he was Rome correspondent for Catholic News Service, the news agency of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops…” Hence, he is a company man, doing what his Vatican masters demand.
Rubio noted that President Trump “has repeatedly underscored the awesome power of nuclear weapons and his desire to reduce global nuclear threats.” That explains the war on Iran. Trump is doing something about the problem of nuclear proliferation involving regimes determined to kill Americans.
By contrast, Leo puts his “faith” in flawed Obama-style agreements that fail and give our enemies a strategic edge.
Leo is a Peacenik from Wayback
McLellan ignores the photographic evidence of Leo as a young man in Rome attending an anti-nuclear weapons rally against President Reagan’s deployment of nuclear arms to counter the Soviet threat. Where is the picture of Leo opposing the Soviet deployment of SS-20 nuclear weapons?
In the 1980s, when President Reagan was confronting the Soviet empire, U.S. Catholic bishops issued a 1983 pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response. This peacenik proposal was widely interpreted as a plea for unilateral disarmament by the West at a time when Reagan countered Soviet threats by deploying American Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe to counter Russian threats to Europe.
Reagan threw that “pastoral” document into the trash can of history, accelerating his military build-up that eventually led to the demise of the old Soviet Union. In that confrontation, as noted, Reagan had the support of John Paul II and the Vatican.
In the current confrontation, Trump is up against the Vatican and the American bishops. The president is right to blast Leo for his misguided comments when the only correct interpretation is that he is fine with Iran having a nuclear weapon.
The point is that the Catholic hierarchy has been wrong, dead wrong, on matters involving the survival of the Christian West, and they are wrong again this time. So is Leo, the first “American” pope.
Amil Imani, an Iranian-American writer, has recently written about Leo’s political alliance with Iran in the same way a treaty was forged between the Holy See and the Third Reich.
The Reagan/Trump Policy
To recap, Reagan’s “peace through strength” policy won the day for America and the world, in the same way Trump’s “peace through strength” policy regarding the global Islamic threat is proving to be victorious in Iran. Leo was on the wrong side then, too.
I was there in the 1980s writing about these matters for Human Events, then Reagan’s favorite paper, noting that a key Catholic architect of the Catholic appeasement policy was Fr. J. Bryan Hehir, who once taught a course at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) entitled, “Matthew, MARX, Luke, and John.”
The IPS is a Marxist think tank that during the 1980s served as a base of operations for those opposed to President Ronald Reagan’s anti-communist foreign policy. It was dedicated to the establishment of revolutionary Marxist and anti-American regimes in Central and Latin America and elsewhere, some of them including Catholic priests committed to liberation theology.
Perhaps Leo ought to clean up the Marxist mess in his church, not to mention the child sex abuse scandals and cover-ups, rather than pose as an arms control expert. If people take him seriously, he could get us all killed.
- Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org
