Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, in a March 4 interview with Vatican News, reviewed the war-induced bloodshed arising around the globe, now highlighted by the U.S.-Israeli invasion of Iran, and offered a way out from this process that is tearing apart civilization.
Asked, “Your Eminence, how are you experiencing these dramatic hours?” Parolin responded: “With great sorrow, because the peoples of the Middle East—including the already fragile Christian communities—have once again been plunged into the horror of war, which brutally shatters human lives, brings destruction, and drags entire nations into spirals of violence with uncertain outcomes.” He noted Pope Leo XIV’s Sunday Angelus devotional presentation March 1, in which he spoke of the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran, as a “tragedy of enormous proportions,” and the “risk of an irreparable abyss.”
There is a worrying trend for civilization, Parolin said: “The erosion of international law is truly worrying: justice has given way to force; the force of law has been replaced by the law of force.”
He refocused the discussion on diplomacy, which can only be based on the promotion of the common good and the interest of the other, as stated in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. Parolin asserted: “The Holy See prefers to recall the need to use all the instruments offered by diplomacy in order to resolve disputes … through the hard work of negotiation and balancing interest, [which] can increase trust among peoples, promote development, and preserve peace.” This is guided by principles: “What is lost is the awareness that the common good truly benefits everyone—that is, the good of the other is also a good for me, and therefore justice, prosperity, and security, are achieved insofar as all can benefit from them.”
