D.E.I.

'A rebel who liked order': Valérie André, France's first female general

Fifty years ago this month, the French army got its first female general: Valérie André, a surgeon, parachutist and helicopter pilot who blazed a trail for women in the highest ranks of the military.


Issued on: 19/04/2026 - RFI

French doctor and pilot Valérie André receiving a medal from the US Secretary of State for Air, Harold Talbot in Paris on 26 October 1953. She was one of the first women in the world to fly a helicopter in combat zones. © AFP - STF

By: Jessica Phelan

Long before she was France’s highest-ranking female officer, Valérie André was a girl who wanted to fly.

“I decided when I was three years old that I would be a pilot,” she told RFI in 2010, then aged 88.

“I used to cut out articles from newspapers and aviation magazines. I collected it all. They were my idols, the aviators of days gone by.”

Pioneers including Elisa Laroche, the first woman to get a pilot’s licence in 1910, and Adrienne Bolland, the first woman to fly over the Andes, in 1921, had shown André that women had a place in the sky.

But they didn’t yet have a place in the armed forces. A handful of women would be recruited as auxiliary pilots during the Second World War, but France disbanded their unit once the conflict was over.

But in the wars that came afterwards, André would become one of the first pilots, man or woman, to fly a new type of aircraft on a new type of mission.

Witness to war

Born in Strasbourg on 21 April, 1922, André came from a family where girls and boys alike were encouraged to pursue their passions.

Alongside aviation, hers was science. As a teenager she saved up to pay for flying lessons, then enrolled to study medicine – but both were interrupted when the Nazis invaded France.

Her native region of Alsace was annexed and André fled, resuming her studies in Paris. In August 1944, she watched the city's liberation.

By the time she qualified as a doctor in 1948, France was at war again. Communist independence fighters were battling France for control of what was then the colony of Indochina – today Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

The French army was relying on volunteers, and it badly needed medics. While women were barred from combat, they were accepted into the medical corps. André signed up.

From Strasbourg to Saigon

Shipped out to a military hospital in Saigon, André was confronted by what she would later call “the daily horror” of war.

Injured soldiers streamed in. Given the number of severe head wounds, she developed a specialism in brain surgery, sometimes operating on as many as 100 people a month.

French forces were scattered across Indochina, many in remote outposts, and not all the wounded could make it to hospital. The army’s solution was to airdrop doctors.

André was the perfect candidate. Writing her university thesis on injuries suffered by parachutists, she had taken up parachuting as a hobby.

She got to work jumping over distant parts of Laos, setting up tents in which to treat patients – French soldiers, locals and sometimes even the Viet Minh that France was fighting.

Soon, technology replaced her parachute. “I saw the helicopters arrive,” André told RFI. “It was love at first sight.”

The flying doctor

The helicopters in question were lightweight and “very primitive”, according to aviation historian Charles Morgan Evans, author of a biography of André.

“This helicopter afforded absolutely no protection. It was entirely made out of aluminium and very underpowered,” he told RFI. “It was just a very difficult helicopter to work with.”

Developed by the American company Hiller, they were fitted with a stretcher on either side on which to carry wounded soldiers.

It was the first time the French army had used them, and André lobbied her superiors for the chance to fly one. Not only did she have the medical training, she pointed out, but she weighed less than most men.

“Since these helicopters had such terrible payload capacity performance in tropical environments, she said it would be possible not just to take two wounded soldiers back to a hospital, but possibly three,” said Evans. “One in the cockpit and two in the litters on the side of the helicopter.”

The head of the medical corps agreed and André returned to France to get her pilot’s licence. Redeployed to Vietnam, she began flying rescue missions.

These involved heading into the heart of areas where fighting was taking place, often escorted by fighter planes firing machine guns or dropping napalm to drive back the Viet Minh. They would have just minutes to land, load up the wounded and take off before the enemy regrouped, then fly long distances to a hospital.

Pilots were exposed to enemy fire, as well as mechanical failures. It was, Evans said, “incredibly, incredibly dangerous”.

“It was mainly afterwards it sank in,” André told RFI decades later. “In the moment, you had to get on with it.”

Under her call sign “Ventilateur”, between 1951 and 1953 she flew 128 missions and rescued 168 soldiers.

'A woman like any other'

After two tours, André returned to France. Soon the country was at war again, this time in Algeria. She flew another 350 missions there from 1959 to 1962, both evacuating soldiers and transporting troops.

After that she came back to France for good, serving as a medical officer on military bases. She was promoted to lieutenant-colonel, colonel and then, on 21 April, 1976 – her 54th birthday – brigadier general.

It was big news. A TV interviewer asked her husband – a fellow army rescue pilot – about her cooking, while André, her eyes hidden behind aviator sunglasses, told the reporter she was “a woman like any other”.

In fact, the French armed forces were structured to allow only exceptional women in. Quotas limited the percentage of female recruits each year that could go into the various branches, which meant only those with the very highest qualifications were picked.

In some cases, according to Evans, André saw men admitted to the medical corps with lower entrance exam scores than female applicants.

She lobbied to revise those quotas, and headed a commission that recommended allowing women into certain officer positions that were previously barred to them.

Today, the medical corps is the only branch of France’s armed forces where women outnumber men. Overall, they make up around 17 percent.


A quiet pioneer

Since André retired in 1981 as a three-star general, the French forces have dropped their quotas and opened all posts to women. It currently has 65 serving female generals, including its first with the highest possible five stars.

Defence officials say they expect that number to rise in the next five years, as women admitted to France’s top military academies in the 1990s – when they stopped capping the numbers of female students – climb the ranks.

André died in January 2025 at the age of 102, with a dozen medals to her name. She avoided calling out sexism in the military publicly, telling RFI: "As long as you do what’s expected of you, you set an example. It’s not a problem.”

Her autobiography contains a clue as to how she saw herself. “In my own way, I’ve always been a rebel, bucking against injustice and outdated traditions,” she wrote.

“But I’m a rebel who loves order… and taking risks.”

The Axis of Terror: The Destructive Price of America’s Blind Allegiance to Israel

M. Reza Behnam

 April 20, 2026

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Photograph Source: NAVCENT Public Affairs – Public Domain

The unprovoked joint U.S.-Israeli war launched against Iran on 28 February 2026 will manifestly change West Asia.  When it ends, Arab despots, who allowed their countries to be used as platforms for aggression against Iran, will confront a new reality.

The safety and stability they thought was theirs based on fealty to the United States and its Israeli proxy was shattered as Iranian missiles and drones were en route to destroy the U.S. military and intelligence installations they had allowed on their soil; a subordination they falsely believed would protect them.

The Arab world is learning the hard way what the late-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in his cold logic, implied decades ago about American foreign policy: “The word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

On the other hand, it is clear that Iran does not abandon its allies, having supported the just cause of the Palestinians for 47 years.  And during the current war, Tehran has refused to abandon its Lebanese Hezbollah allies as well. It has adopted a “peace for all or no peace” stance, refusing peace negotiations/accords that would not include its regional allies.

Deep-seated militarism and distrust, hallmarks of the region, are directly linked to a legacy of foreign intervention: the post-WWI breakup of the Ottoman Empire; the 1948 imposition of the Zionist colony in Palestine; and America’s unwavering support for its killing machine.

From the Truman Doctrine to the Carter Doctrine, the Persian Gulf and its natural resources have been regarded as “vital interests” of the United States, to keep riches in the hands of wealthy Americans.  Every U.S. president has declared a willingness to use “any means necessary” to dominate the region.

To “protect its interests” and its Israeli proxy, the United States has operated 19 military bases across roughly 10 countries in West Asia, housing 40-50,000 military personnel. Of that number eight were considered permanent installations, while the others were temporary or forward-operating sites.  It also deployed several naval ships to the Mediterranean; with the headquarters of the anti-Iran naval armada, the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, anchored in Bahrain.

Prior to the latest Zionist instigated war on the Islamic Republic, these sites had been used by America to spy on, destabilize and attack Iran as well as other Muslim countries.

For example, the drone that killed Quds commander, General Qassem Soleimani and several others, including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, in 2020, was flown from the Al-Udeid air base in Qatar, home of U.S. Central Command.   It is worth noting that the Iraqis assassinated in the attack were Qatar’s fellow Arabs; Soleimani was the lone Persian among them.

It is important not to forget that the presence of U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia was identified by al-Qaeda as a primary reason for the attacks of 11 September 2001; this in addition to Washington’s unconditional support for Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians.

When the Arab states outsourced their security to the United States, believing they had purchased safety and security, they essentially relinquished their sovereignty; this is especially true of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states that border the Persian Gulf: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Beyond military bases, the U.S. has dominated these Gulf regimes through economic ties, security partnerships and massive arms sales, which have created dependence on American military technology, training and maintenance.

As Washington built up its military in the region and increased its threats to use force if Iran did not surrender to its (essentially Israeli) demands, the Islamic Republic, in an official letter to the United Nations (19 February 2026), reaffirmed once again that if subjected to military aggression, it would:

“respond decisively and proportionately in the exercise of its inherent right      of self-defense under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. In such circumstances, all bases, facilities, and assets of the hostile force in the region would constitute legitimate targets in the context of Iran’s defensive response. The United States would bear full and direct responsibility for any unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences.”

Soon after the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes and targeted assassination of 86-year old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family on 28 February, Iran launched retaliatory attacks on U.S. bases in the Gulf; installations used to strike the country.

Ironically, the Gulf monarchies have based their security on the primary source of regional insecurity. Washington’s unconditional support of Israel has made the entire region a target.

Despite warnings of the risks to the economic and structural stability of its Gulf partners, the Trump administration, with Israel, escalated its attacks on Iran.  Forced to the forefront of a war they did not want, Gulf rulers have learned that they are expendable in the eyes of Tel Aviv and Washington.

The disparity between the vast economic wealth of the Gulf states and their limited political agency is largely a legacy of their historical evolution.

The modern oil-rich monarchies of the Persian Gulf evolved from ancient maritime trading hubs and tribal confederations.  Until the late 20th century, the Gulf states, except Saudi Arabia, existed as British protectorates and their boundaries were primarily shaped by colonial officials.

Most of the current ruling families are descendants of leaders maintained in power by the British during their 150-year domination of the Gulf (1820-1971).

To support its strategic interests, primarily in India, Britain legitimized existing hereditary leaders and installed local hand-picked rulers that were willing to accept British authority. Those who refused “supervision” risked being deposed and replaced with a more compliant family member.

Interestingly, Britain’s hegemony over the Gulf began in 1820 over its refusal to pay tolls to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.  At that time, the powerful Qawasim maritime tribe (the Al-Qasimi family) controlled the waters of the Gulf and levied tolls on all trade that passed through the strait.  The British refusal led to confrontations between the two sides and the destruction of the entire Qawasim fleet.

Today, the descendants of the Al-Qasimi family, continue to rule two Emirates (Ras El Khaimah and Sharjah).

If the Gulf monarchs survive the war, their populations may—for the first time since both world wars—decide their futures free of tyrants, profligate sheiks and foreign domination. They can look to their own history, traditions and cultural heritage instead of relying on and mimicking the West, building one more alien useless skyscraper, sponsoring LIV golf tournaments and drag racing in the desert.

For nearly five decades, Zionist regimes have focused on a strategic goal: the election of a U.S. president compliant enough to wage war against Iran on their behalf.  They found their cat’s-paw in the current occupant of the Oval Office, Donald J. Trump.

Born at the barrel of a gun, Israel secures its place in the region by fostering chaos and conflict.  By deliberately sowing inter-Arab and Iranian-Arab division, it has reaped enormous profits through a booming arms and intelligence industry.  And by keeping its neighbors at odds and concentrated on Iran, it ensures no unified front arises that can challenge its existence.

The war on Iran has forced evolution, if not a revolution, upon West Asia. This shift could alter the geopolitics of the region, triggering U.S. independence from Israel and enabling regional transformation free from U.S. and Israeli domination.

With these stirring words, “The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, TIS TIME TO PART,” Thomas Paine (Common Sense) called on the American colonies to sever ties and declare independence from Britain.  His call for a complete break from imperial power in 1776 is more timely than ever.

For America and the Arab states, severing ties with Israel is the only sensible path to take in order to finally end the chronic destructive cycle the region has known since Israel was forced upon it.  Yet, owing to Washington’s strategic myopia and Arab leaders’ historical deference, it is doubtful that they will make such a fundamental and necessary shift in regional politics.

Although our days are filled with grief and uncertainty because of yet another U.S.-sponsored Israeli war against its neighbors, one thing, however, is certain there will never be peace in West Asia until there is justice and self-determination for the Palestinians.

Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist who specializes in comparative politics with a focus on West Asia.  

Women victims of Sudan's war bear scars of 'indescribable' violence

Sudan's civil war, now in its fourth year, has been described by the UN as the world's worst humanitarian crisis for women and girls. Sexual violence has reportedly been used as a weapon of war, notably by paramilitaries fighting the Sudanese army. RFI hears from women who have suffered or witnessed "indescribable" violence.


Issued on: 15/04/2026 - RFI

Sudanese women in the el-Geneina camp in West Darfur. © El Tayeb Siddig / Reuters

Twenty-year-old Sarah – not her real name – wears a pink floral headscarf. Her eyes fill with tears as she recounts how the war tore her family apart in her home town of Nyala in Darfur: bodies in the streets, harassment by soldiers from both sides, water and food running out within the first week.

In July 2023, her father left to look for food and never returned. Then the family home was hit by shelling.

“An artillery shell landed on our house. It killed my elder brother and our neighbour’s son," she tells RFI from the Gorom camp in South Sudan, which hosts more than 20,000 Sudanese refugees.

Left alone with her mother and her sisters, she says she was repeatedly harassed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In October, paramilitaries entered their home and attacked her.

“They started with my mother, and my sister was with me. We had hidden my younger sisters behind us. They beat my mother while she was pregnant. While they were trying to assault us and hit us, my mother tried to step in to protect us. They beat her and killed her, even though she was pregnant.”

Three of Sarah’s four sisters later fled and she has had no news of them since.

As for her father, Sarah says she recognised him in a video published by the RSF after the capture of El-Fasher from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in late October 2025.

He was among prisoners being beaten and summarily executed. As she didn't see him die, she hopes he may have survived.

Witness to horror

RSF militia seized control of El-Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur, after more than a year of siege.

According to eyewitness reports, RSF fighters went from house to house asking residents about their ethnicity, and carrying out arrests, summary executions and rapes.

Insaf Oumar Barakat, a nurse at El-Fasher’s Saudi Hospital, managed to flee. “When the RSF entered the city, there was bombing everywhere, people were dying. I was with five women – they had just given birth at the Saudi Hospital,” she tells RFI.

“There were no roads left. People were running in every direction. In the end, only about 20 of us managed to get out of our group. There were many more of us.”

She says what the paramilitaries did to those who couldn't escape is beyond words – some torn apart by gunfire, others kidnapped, and the girls taken away and raped.

“Sometimes there were 10 soldiers on one victim. I even saw them cut off a woman’s breasts. It’s indescribable. It was on the roadside. I know a father whose daughters were raped in front of him. They told him: ‘We won’t kill you, but we will take your women’.”

Lingering nightmares

Some women victims of sexual violence have found refuge with an organisation known as Shama’a. Set up in 2007 in Khartoum by Nour Hussein Al Sewaty Mohammed, who goes by the name of Mama Nour, it provides refuge for single mothers and their children.

But when the conflict broke out between RSF and SAF, Mama Nour was forced to evacuate the women to safer ground in Wad Medani, Al Jazirah state.

Most of those she now cares for are victims of RSF.

“Some of the girls have nightmares. Others suddenly start crying – screaming in the middle of a meal, like a kind of psychotic episode,” she tells RFI. “Their whole bodies are marked – a blow here, a bite, a scratch. What they went through is not human.”

Chaima, 23, went to the shelter after being abandoned by her family in Khartoum.

“From the beginning of the war, my family left me on my own. Then the neighbours left too. Some men came and took advantage of my isolation,” she says. “I was kept prisoner for three months. They tortured me.”

She was later freed by the RSF while pregnant. She’s soon to leave Mama Nour’s shelter to get married, but she has to leave her two-year-old child behind. Mama Nour has decided to adopt him.

“This marriage now means everything to me,” Chaima says. “I will never be alone again.”

This article was based on reporting by RFI's Florence Miettaux

 

Pope Leo XIV lands in Angola, says it is 'not in my interest at all' to debate Trump

By Manuel Ribeiro

Published on 18/04/2026 - EURONEWS

After visiting Cameroon, Angola is the third leg of Pope Leo XIV's 11-day tour of Africa. People hope for appeals for peace and for him to tackle the economic woes of the oil- and rare-earth-rich nation.

After visiting Cameroon, Pope Leo XIV landed in Luanda, Angola on Saturday, where he was welcomed by faithful. The Holy Father is about to become the third pontiff to visit Angola, after John Paul II (1992) and Benedict XVI (2009).

Meanwhile, during Pope Leo XIV's plane journey on Saturday he said that it was “not in my interest at all” to debate President Donald Trump about the US-Israeli war in Iran.

But the American pope also took the opportunity to set the record straight, insisting that not everything he says was directed at Trump, but reflects the broader Gospel message of peace.

As soon as Pope Leo XIV landed in Luanda he was scheduled to meet with Angola’s president, João Lourenço, and deliver a speech, the latest on a trip during which he has been stepping up his rhetoric, after becoming the target of criticism from Donald Trump.

On Sunday, the Holy Father will travel by helicopter to the village of Muxima, around 130 kilometres south-east of Luanda, where a 16th-century church built by the Portuguese has become one of Africa’s most important pilgrimage sites.

Five hundred years ago, this Marian shrine became a key point in the transatlantic trade in human beings run by the Portuguese, serving as the place where enslaved people were baptised before being shipped to the Americas.

A new basilica is currently being built in Muxima, part of a multi-million-dollar government project to turn the site into a major tourist destination.

“It is a historic moment of grace, a moment of deep emotion, with tears in our eyes and gratitude in our hearts,” said the rector of the shrine, Father Mpindi Lubanzadio Alberto, speaking to the Catholic news website ACI Africa.

The rector of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Conception of Muxima, in the Diocese of Viana, Angola, spoke about the planned apostolic visit of Pope Leo XIV as a decisive spiritual moment for the country.

Tens of thousands of worshippers are expected to travel there to see the leader of the Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIV calls for world peace are likely to resonate in Angola, which in 2002 emerged from a 27-year civil war that broke out after independence from Portugal in 1975.

As well as his appeals for peace, Pope Leo XIV is expected to address the issue of corruption and exploitation in the country, where, despite its vast fossil fuel reserves, a third of the population lives below the poverty line.

Angola is currently Africa’s fourth-largest oil producer and ranks among the world’s top 20, according to the International Energy Agency. It is also the world’s third-largest producer of diamonds and has significant deposits of gold and rare earths.

Yet despite its varied natural resources, the World Bank estimated in 2023 that more than 30% of the population was living on less than €1.83 a day.

Angola has a population of about 38 million, and 44% of Angolans are Catholic. The country gained independence from Portugal in 1975 but still bears the scars of a devastating civil war that began soon afterwards and dragged on, with ups and downs, for 27 years before ending in 2002. It is estimated that more than half a million people lost their lives.

During his four-day visit to Angola, Pope Leo XIV will direct his message particularly to young people, seeking to offer them hope and healing, the Vatican has said.

Pope Leo XIV's tour of the African continent included stops in Algeria and Cameroon, after he visits in Angola, Pope Leo XIV will mark his last stop in Equatorial Guinea.

White House vs the pope: What is behind the clash and Catholic just war doctrine?

Copyright AP Photo

By Aleksandar Brezar
Published on 17/04/2026

EURONEWS

Theologians Euronews spoke to believe that the escalating war of words between Washington and the Holy See has raised important questions over Catholic and Christian moral thought.

When US Vice President JD Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019, he chose Saint Augustine as his patron.

On Tuesday, speaking at a Turning Point USA event, Vance invoked the tradition of the fifth-century theologian and one of the most important Church fathers to push back against Pope Leo XIV's criticism of the war in Iran.

The White House number two warned the pontiff to "be careful when he talks about matters of theology," citing "more than a 1,000-year tradition of just war theory" in his defence.

Meanwhile, the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church was in the Algerian port city of Annaba, paying homage at the basilica not far from where St Augustine died and was initially interred.

Hippo Regius, as it was known in the bishop's time, is where St Augustine wrote most of what became the intellectual basis of the just war principles Vance was claiming to defend. Pope Leo XIV is the first pontiff to hail from the Augustinian order.

Whether Vance knew what the Holy Father’s itinerary was that day, his office did not say.

Vice President JD Vance shakes hands with Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet during a Turning Point USA event in Athens, GA, 14 April 2026 AP Photo

Vance was not the first member of the administration to weigh in.

Days earlier, US President Donald Trump had posted on Truth Social and later reiterated to the press that Pope Leo XIV was “weak on crime" and "terrible for foreign policy," suggesting the pontiff believed Tehran should be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

The pope never made any comments regarding the Islamic Republic’s right to nukes.

The post came after the pope had called Trump's threat to destroy Iran's "whole civilisation" "truly unacceptable".

Pope Leo XIV responded the following morning on board the papal plane to Algiers. "I'm not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel," he said.

"I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems."

What the doctrine says

Just war theory, rooted in St Augustine and further elaborated on by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae, sets out strict conditions for the moral use of military force.

The threat must be lasting, grave and certain, and success must be realistically achievable. Most importantly, all other means of resolution must be genuinely exhausted, and the harm caused must not exceed the harm it seeks to prevent.

Put simply, the purpose of this set of rules is to prevent those engaged in war from being the final judges of their own righteousness.

"The just war doctrine doesn't merely ask whether your cause feels just," Joseph Capizzi, Dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, told Euronews. “As we all know, everybody thinks their situation is just."

"It understands that most people think of their causes as just. But it is a means by which you can distinguish legitimately just causes of war from illegitimate causes of war.”

Pontificial Swiss Guards enter the St Damasus Courtyard at the Vatican ahead of the arrival of French President Emmanuel Macron, 10 April 2026 AP Photo

The doctrine has also shifted in how it is applied. For most of its history, it was used by priests to authorise their rulers' wars. Spurred on by world wars and the discovery of nuclear weapons, the modern papacy has used it in the other direction.

"Before, just war doctrine was used often by national clergy to give permission to their emperor or their king to go to war," Massimo Faggioli, professor of ecclesiology at Trinity College Dublin told Euronews.

"Right now, it is used mostly — I would say almost always — to say ‘well, no, this military intervention doesn't meet those criteria.’”

Writing as the Roman Empire crumbled, St Augustine had already posed the question of what is righteous in one of the most well-known open checks on power in Catholic moral thought.

"Justice removed,” he asked in The City of God, “what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?"

Vance has cited The City of God as “the best criticism of our modern age” he has ever read, deeply affecting his religious outlook and thoughts on domestic and foreign policy.

Vatican’s track record

The administration's framing of Pope Leo XIV as a pacifist who simply does not understand that force is sometimes necessary contradicts the pontiff’s and the Church’s track record, experts say.

Before his election just last year, the pontiff was a registered Republican voter. While he has criticised the Iran war, the Holy Father has shown support for Ukraine's right to self-defence.

In recent decades, past popes also carefully deliberated the context before commenting on any given conflict.

The Holy See quietly regarded the post-September 11 intervention in Afghanistan as meeting just war criteria, as the US went after Taliban extremists and Al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden.

Yet Pope John Paul II opposed both the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 invasion of Iraq not as a pacifist, but on the grounds that last resort had not been demonstrated. Pope Leo XIV’s position on Iran is in line with his predecessors, according to theologians.

Charlie Company Task Force 1-64 of the 3rd Infantry Division rolls into a major park in downtown Baghdad, 7 April 2003 Brant Sanderlin/ 2003 Atlanta Journal-Constit

"To accuse the pope of being a pacifist is really absurd," Faggioli said. "Vance and Trump are accusing the pope of thinking about war like a European Catholic. But that's not true.”

"He is using just war doctrine — and the American cardinals who have spoken against the war in Iran, they have used just war doctrine in ways that Europeans would not. So this is, in some sense, an intra-American debate."

There is also the matter of what Vance actually said — not just about just war, but about the pope's remit, after he suggested Pope Leo XIV should confine himself to morality and stay out of foreign policy, Faggioli explained.

"Vance is one of those typical Catholics who thinks that morality is only sexual morality," Faggioli said. "When he said the pope should stick only to morality, he meant sexual morality — as if war were not a matter of morality. Of course it is."

Thousand-year tradition and its tenets

The US bishops and other Catholic Church clergy indeed did not stay quiet. On Wednesday, Chairman of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine Bishop James Massa issued a statement in support of the Holy Father’s position, but also the Catholic Church as a whole.

"A constant tenet of that thousand-year tradition is a nation can only legitimately take up the sword 'in self-defence, once all peace efforts have failed,'" Massa, auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn, wrote.

"When Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology. He is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ."

A woman holds a rosary as she attends a vigil for peace led by Pope Leo XIV inside St Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, 11 April 2026 Gregorio Borgia/Copyright 2026 The AP. All rights reserved

Unlike in other public exchanges in recent times with those opposing Washington’s view, the Trump administration has struggled to find the usual levers, experts say. "It's very hard for them to use the usual tactics to delegitimise the pope, because he is American," Faggioli said.

"They can't call him a communist, they can't call him a radical leftist — his record as a theologian doesn't support that."

Euronews contacted several Catholic institutions and theologians for perspectives to further outline the Trump administration's application of just war doctrine, but none agreed to speak on the record.

‘A consistent lesson of our faith’

On Thursday, from a peace meeting in Cameroon — a country not without its own existing tensions — the pope said, “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth."

The post on X from his official Pontifex account drew nearly 10 million views in English alone by Friday evening.

Capizzi urged against reading every papal statement as aimed at Washington, however. “You're in Cameroon, on a continent marked by severe religious conflict; that comment has a much broader application.”

Still, according to Capizzi, the Holy Father’s words are meant for all of the faithful.

"Any believer who appeals to God — as though God is on their side — ought to do so with great fear and trembling,” he said. “That is a consistent lesson of our faith: that a believer is the person who has a healthy fear of God and of God's judgment of his or her actions. And that includes the way he or she speaks about God."

Pope Leo XIV with the Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya frees a white dove at Saint Joseph's Cathedral in Bamenda, Cameroon, 16 April 2026 AP Photo

The same day at the Pentagon, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth led a worship service and read what he described as a prayer recited by Combat Search and Rescue crews during the Iran operation.

He introduced it as "CSAR 25:17," meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17. What followed was nearly verbatim the monologue delivered by Samuel L Jackson's hitman in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, in the scene immediately before his character Jules Winnfield commits a murder.

The actual Ezekiel 25:17 is considerably shorter and less specific. Tarantino's version was itself adapted from a 1973 Japanese martial arts film.

‘Nothing against the pope’

Trump won around 55% of US Catholic votes in 2024. A poll conducted in late March, jointly by Republican pollster Shaw & Co Research and Democratic pollster Beacon Research, found his approval among Catholics had fallen to 48%, with 52% disapproving.

A Fox News poll found US Catholics opposed to military action in Iran by 10 points and against Trump's conduct toward Iran by 20. A separate NBC survey found US registered voters now view the pope more favourably than the president by a net margin of 46 points.

US President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, 16 April 2026 AP Photo

On Thursday, Trump told reporters he has "nothing against the pope" and is "all about the Gospel," while continuing to state Pope Leo XIV was in favour of Tehran having nuclear weapons.

Trump also said his preference remained with the pope's brother Louis, who lives in Florida. "Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo (XIV) doesn’t,” Trump said.

"If I wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the Vatican,” he reiterated.

The night before, police had surrounded the New Lenox home of a different brother of the pope, John Prevost, following a bomb threat. K9 explosive-detection units found nothing. The investigation remains ongoing.

The greater picture

For Faggioli, the dispute is a symptom of something that has been building for years: not a domestic row about one war, but a contest over what Christianity means and who speaks for it.

"America always had a religious understanding of itself as a nation, but presidents were very cautious about not looking like messianic figures — at least in life,” Faggioli said.

“Trump has exploited the creation of a vacuum of secularisation in America, and he has filled that vacuum with a certain degree of messianism — and some American Christians are happy about that."

"Trumpism is a form of political messianism. He sees himself — and many people see in him — someone with a divine mission: a political Messiah who will deliver salvation to America, to Americans, to Christianity. And he is serious when he posts those things."

 US President Donald Trump and other dignitaries attend the funeral of Pope Francis in St Peter's Square at the Vatican, 26 April 2025 AP Photo

Capizzi, for his part, was more of the belief that the US president would eventually mend bridges with the Holy See. "I actually consider this a hopeful sign — that it's touching and impacting President Trump, despite what he's saying and what he's posted."

"This conversation has shown that the Church retains her moral authority,” he said.

“This is a teaching moment. Catholics and others are getting to see that these doctrines are over a thousand years old, that we have thought about these questions for a very long time, and there is a moral gravity behind these claims."

As for the pope, John Prevost said something crucial about his brother before any of this began. "I don't think he'll stay quiet for too long if he has something to say," he told the New York Times last year. "He won't just sit back."