From The New York Times (gift article):
To the world, it has seemed clear for months that President Trump has been fighting with Pope Leo XIV about the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, which the pope has said is not a just war.
But to the president’s man at the Vatican, that narrative is simply “false,” and “entirely unfair.”
In fact, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, would go so far as to say that the pope — the first born in the United States — has not even declared the war unjust.
“The Vatican has not said, nor will they say, declare definitively whether or not this is a just or unjust war,” he said during a 90-minute interview from his office in Rome in late June.
Yet on a flight to Spain several weeks earlier, the pope spoke plainly.
“I believe this has already been made very clear: In Iran, the criteria for a just war are not present,” Leo said.
To Mr. Burch, declaring the Iran war unjust is not a judgment the pope can make because he has access to only “a set of limited facts.”
An ambassador’s job is always part ceremony, part policy. Inevitably, there are differences between countries that the diplomat must help navigate.
But Mr. Burch is in an unusual spot. Leo is no typical head of state who deals simply in temporal politics. He is the world’s most prominent religious leader, attending to the moral lives of 1.4 billion Catholics, including Mr. Burch.
A longtime conservative Catholic activist, Mr. Burch also navigates the relationship between the two most prominent American men in the world — a popular pope and a bellicose president who have sharply diverging visions of global leadership.
Mr. Burch has made clear his fealty to Mr. Trump, even as the president publicly derided the pope on social media and Vice President JD Vance questioned the theology of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church.
“I have never once thought for a second that somehow I couldn’t properly represent the president,” Mr. Burch said, adding that he believes the president and the pope share goals that “are very much aligned.”
An American pope is a unique opportunity for the United States, but he said that fundamentally, “the policies and leadership of President Trump are enabling a moment for the Catholic Church to both grow and thrive.”
