{"id":48957,"date":"2026-04-24T09:04:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T09:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=48957"},"modified":"2026-04-24T09:04:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T09:04:47","slug":"pope-condemns-killing-of-protesters-in-iran-reaffirms-stance-against-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=48957","title":{"rendered":"Pope condemns killing of protesters in Iran, reaffirms stance against war"},"content":{"rendered":"
Pope Leo on Thursday firmly condemned the killing of protesters in Iran, after the US\u00a0President Donald Trump criticized the Catholic leader last week for not doing so while speaking out \u200bagainst the US-Israel war with Iran.<\/p>\n

Leo, the first US\u00a0pope, also decried the deaths of “so many” \u200ccivilians in the war and lamented the\u00a0collapse of US-Iran peace talks\u00a0in comments aboard his return flight to Rome after a four-nation Africa tour.<\/p>\n

“I condemn all actions that are unjust. I condemn the taking of people’s lives,” the pope said in response to a question \u200bin a press conference about reports that Iran has killed thousands of protesters.<\/p>\n

“When a regime, when a \u200bcountry takes decisions which takes away the lives of other people unjustly, then obviously that \u2060is something that should be condemned,” he said.<\/p>\n

Leo was attacked by Trump on social media as “terrible” on April 12, \u200bafter the pope emerged as an outspoken critic of the Iran war and the president’s hardline anti-immigration policies.<\/p>\n

Read:\u00a0Pope Leo decries exploitation by world’s ‘authoritarians’ during Angola trip<\/p>\n

In a post \u200btwo days later, Trump asked, “will someone please tell Pope Leo” about the deaths of Iranian protesters.<\/p>\n

Iranian authorities killed thousands of people during anti-government protests in January, Iran’s worst domestic unrest since the era of its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Rights groups say the government has continued to \u200bcrack down on opponents while war rages, with Tehran carrying out another execution this week.<\/p>\n

Leo did not mention Trump \u200bin his remarks on Thursday. He said that as the leader of the 1.4-billion-member Catholic Church, he does not support war.<\/p>\n

“As a pastor, \u200cI \u2060cannot be in favor of war,” he said, adding that he carries with him a photo of a child killed by Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Leo said the child had been among the crowds that greeted him during his visit to Lebanon in November and December, as part of the pope’s first overseas trip.<\/p>\n

“We have seen so \u200bmany innocents killed,” Leo said \u200bof the war.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Leo on Thursday firmly condemned the killing of protesters in Iran, after the US\u00a0President Donald Trump criticized the Catholic leader last week for not doing so while speaking out \u200bagainst the US-Israel war with Iran. Leo, the first US\u00a0pope, also decried the deaths of “so many” \u200ccivilians in the war and lamented the\u00a0collapse of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}