The U.S. Helsinki Commission examined how the Holy See conducts diplomacy amid growing global polarization and wars on the same day President Donald Trump denounced Pope Leo XIV.
In response to Trump’s social media post Monday calling Leo “terrible for foreign policy” and claiming responsibility for his election to the papacy, Alexander John Paul Lutz, a policy fellow at the Helsinki Commission, said during the April 13 hearing that Leo’s message, and the Holy See’s, is unique from other world powers.
“To all of this, the force, the bellicosity, the transactionalism, the insistence that every actor on the world stage must really be angling for or towards something political, Pope Leo responded with a different vision,” Lutz said.
Citing Leo’s address to the diplomatic corps in January, Lutz emphasized that unlike other global powers, Leo’s message asserts that “the protection of the principle of the inviolability of human dignity and the sanctity of life always counts for more than any mere national interest.”
“These are the grounds on which the Holy See conducts its diplomacy,” Lutz said, noting the Vatican engages all parties, but “never fully endorses any state’s political platform.” Rather, he said, the Holy See “will subject every policy it encounters, including those of the United States, to an intellectual and moral rigor that is likely to improve it,” and “insists on speaking the truth for the record, even when doing so may lead to misunderstanding and scorn.”
“What is clear is that no other state on earth is even attempting to do what the Holy See is trying to do, to address the world as it is while insisting that it answer to something higher than power,” Lutz said.
Victor Gaetan, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News, echoed Lutz during his testimony and gave context for the Holy See’s diplomatic approach.
“The Vatican has bilateral relations with 184 nations and operates 124 nunciatures or embassies around the world,” Gaetan said. “The popeʼs right-hand man is the secretary of state, who is typically a diplomat, a priest diplomat. Because the diplomats are priests who take vows of silence regarding what they know, they often approach tasks as pastors, which helps explain why Vatican diplomats are notoriously discreet and why they are willing to meet even with dictators. No one is beyond salvation.”
Gaetan explained that Vatican diplomacy has four dimensions: representation, mediation, preservation, and evangelization. He emphasized mediation as “the most important element in Vatican diplomacy,” highlighting several instances of the Holy See’s success in resolving conflicts between nations.
He also noted Leo’s outspoken advocacy for peace is grounded in “the priorities and pragmatism of his predecessors,” including Pope John Paul II, whom Leo echoed in his recent vigil for piece, saying: “Enough of war!”
“The popeʼs critique of war in Iran and bombing in Lebanon should not be understood as a political,” Gaetan said. “Rather, it is a theological position grounded in what is called ‘just war theory,’ developed by none other than St. Augustine in the early fifth century and studied in all United States military academies.”
For a war to be justified, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it must be waged to fight against a grave evil, the damage caused by waging the war cannot be graver than the evil it is meant to eliminate, there must be a serious prospect of success, and all alternatives to war must have already been tried.
Other panelists at the briefing included Peter G. Martin, a former U.S. diplomat at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See, and Jackie Aldrette, executive director of AVSI USA, a humanitarian aid organization that has projects in 41 countries.
