Catholic News Service

As the world waited for the U.N. weapons inspectors to make a Feb. 14 report of their findings in Iraq, Pope John Paul II appealed again for a peaceful settlement of the crisis and sent a high-level envoy to Baghdad to press for greater cooperation with the inspection regime.

Cardinal Roger Etchegaray left for Baghdad Feb. 10 on a mission to “help the Iraqi authorities make a serious reflection on the duty of effective international cooperation, based on justice and international law, in view of assuring the supreme gift of peace to its people,” a Vatican statement said.

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Local response to Iraq

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Cardinal Etchegaray said he planned to deliver a personal message from the pope to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The move was welcomed by U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Jim Nicholson, who told Catholic News Service Feb. 10 that “if there’s anyone that might be able to get Hussein to listen to reason, it might be the pope.”

The Vatican’s diplomatic move, announced Feb. 9, came a day after U.S. theologian Michael Novak met with Vatican officials to lay out the Bush administration’s case for war and the pope warned that “peace is in danger.”

“We need to multiply our efforts. One cannot be immobile in the face of terrorist attacks, nor when faced with the threats that are being raised on the horizon. One should not give up, as if war is inevitable,” he said Feb. 8 in a speech to the Sant’Egidio Community, an Italian lay group that has worked for peace around the world.

All the moves came in the week following U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Feb. 5 speech to the United Nations, laying out the U.S. case for war with Iraq.

The pope was due to meet with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz Feb. 14, and Vatican officials have engaged in meetings with foreign officials—publicized and unpublicized—in an effort to help defuse the crisis.

On Feb. 18, the pope was scheduled to meet with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to discuss the Iraqi crisis, Vatican officials said.

Novak made a case for war to a skeptical Vatican audience in the face of a chorus of opposition from bishops and religious congregations, arguing that military action was justified under traditional self-defense principles and not under some new concept of preventive war.

Brought to Rome by the U.S. State Department, Novak met privately Feb. 8 with Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican’s equivalent of foreign minister, and officials of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and later detailed his Vatican presentation at a Feb. 10 Rome symposium organized by the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican.

Novak said Hussein had disrupted international order by refusing to disarm and that Iraqi weapons risked falling into the hands of a new breed of international terrorists eager to strike countries around the world with no advance warning.

“A limited and carefully conducted war to bring about a regime change in Iraq is, as a last resort, morally obligatory,” Novak said at the Rome symposium. “For public authorities to fail to conduct such a war would be to put their trust imprudently in the sanity and good will of Saddam Hussein.”

His remarks came shortly after the Society of Jesus joined several other religious congregations and orders in concluding that a pre-emptive war with Iraq is not justified at this time.

The Social Justice Secretariat of the Jesuits, in consultation with the staff of the order’s Rome headquarters, outlined opposition to the war in a Feb. 7 letter sent to each Jesuit province.

“We believe, with many others, that the reasons for a pre-emptive attack against Iraq are not convincing, and the effects of a possible war will turn out to be so devastating that it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to justify a military intervention,” the statement said.

The letter, signed by Jesuit Father Fernando Franco, head of the secretariat, called for “a considered and prayerful reflection on the main reasons that militate against war on Iraq.”

The social justice office said its opposition was based on several considerations:

— “The ‘doctrine’ of a pre-emptive war is neither in accordance with U.N. doctrine and law, nor morally defensible. The application of this doctrine would open the door to an infinite war, a ‘war without end.’”

— A war against Iraq would heighten tensions between Muslims and Christians in the Middle East and beyond.

— A willingness to spend massive amounts of money on a military action, but not on development aid makes one ask “whether the true motives of war against Iraq have to do more with economic than security reasons.”

— The push for a war is being made “unilaterally by the leaders of a few industrialized countries outside the control of the U.N.,” and the United States and its allies seem to have disregarded the “obligation to build a broader consensus through legitimate democratic processes.”

— “Experience has shown us that the poor are always the main victims of violence and war.”

The Jesuit headquarters called on members of the order to strengthen their efforts against violence and in favor of peace.

The letter asked each Jesuit province to get people to “creatively reflect on these issues, prepare some plans of public action and discern concrete ways of collaborating with others.”

The day Powell spoke to the United Nations, representatives of Christian churches in Europe criticized the threat of a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq, saying war must not be considered “an acceptable instrument of foreign policy.”

While rejecting U.S. arguments for an attack on Iraq, the church leaders also called Hussein to cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors and guarantee full human rights to Iraqi citizens.

“The people in Iraq must be given hope that there are alternatives to both dictatorship and war,” said a statement issued after a meeting in Berlin Feb. 5.

The meeting was convened by the World Council of Churches in consultation with the Conference of European Churches, the National Council of Churches and the Middle East Council of Churches, hosted by the Evangelical Church in Germany.

In separate statements, the Indonesian and Indian bishops also spoke against a possible invasion.

In a letter to Indonesian Catholics, the president and secretary-general of the Indonesian bishops’ conference said the Iraqi people were “created by God, but destroyed by war,” reported UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand.

“On these grounds, we reject war and recommend peace,” said Cardinal Julius Darmaatmadja of Jakarta, conference president, and Archbishop Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo of Semarang, secretary-general.

Armed conflict with Iraq, already devastated by malnutrition, poverty and economic sanctions, “would be nothing less than a death blow,” said the Feb. 4 statement by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.

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