ROME — Pope Francis asserted Sunday not only unjust wars but war itself is always a “crime against humanity.”
In his weekly Angelus address, the pontiff recalled “those who suffer the cruelty of war in so many parts of the world, especially in Ukraine, Palestine and Israel.”
Weapons “continue to kill and destroy,” he stated. “Let us pray that those who have power over these conflicts reflect on the fact that war is not the way to resolve them, because it sows death among civilians and destroys cities and infrastructure.”
“In other words, today war is in itself a crime against humanity,” he contended. “Let us not forget this: war is in itself a crime against humanity. Peoples need peace!”
“We can see that we – humanity as a whole – are not yet educated enough to stop all war. Let us always pray for this grace: to educate for peace,” he declared.
This is not the first time Francis has refuted the millennial Catholic tradition of just war theory.
“Once even in our Churches there was talk of holy war or just war,” Francis declared in 2022. “Today one can no longer speak like that. Wars are always unjust.”
Whereas popes of the past have been attentive to formulating their teachings regarding war and peace in precise terminology, with great respect for the Church’s ancient teaching on conditions for a just war, Francis has been willing to simply discard the entire tradition.
In the 13th century, the great theologian and doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas, laid out a careful teaching on the conditions necessary to justify waging war, on the premise that war was sometimes just and sometimes unjust.
Picking up on the teaching of his predecessor Saint Augustine, Aquinas wrote that those who exercise public authority are charged with the care of the common good, and thus “as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances,” so too, “it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies.”
In the same vein, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a compendium of official Church teaching, instructs that a series of conditions are necessary to justify the use of military force.
It states that “the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; there must be serious prospects of success; the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”
“These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the ‘just war’ doctrine,” the Catechism declares.
The Catechism also states that those who serve their country in the armed forces “are servants of the security and freedom of nations. If they carry out their duty honorably, they truly contribute to the common good of the nation and the maintenance of peace.”
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