Douglas Roche, Edmonton, AB

Shortly after 10 am on Feb. 28, the first day of the Iran war, three missiles consecutively struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab in southern Iran, killing 175 students between the ages of seven and twelve and their teachers. The school is adjacent to a compound operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the military force that reports to Iran’s supreme leader. A U.S. military investigation showed that the attack may have been the result of U.S. use of wrong targeting data. Whatever the reason, the assault tragically demonstrated once again how it is the innocent who suffer when war takes place.

In this act, we see once more the horrors of war — the devastation, the crimes, the cruelty, the mistakes, the utter senselessness of killing human beings — for some purported reason that the propaganda machines insist is necessary. The Iran war now joins the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Syria war, the Ukraine war, the Gaza war, to mention only the major conflicts of this century (we’ve seen only a quarter of the century so far), which have scarred humanity. With each passing day of more attacks on ordinary people who want nothing more than a chance to live out their lives, the world descends further into barbarism.

The institutional machinery for peace created around the United Nations Charter is now crumbling. International law is trampled on and the arms merchants are getting richer. We are in a quagmire. Where can we find the moral and political leadership to get the world on track for peace and social justice?

Readers of this paper know that I look to Pope Leo XIV and Prime Minister Mark Carney to show us the way forward. I do not mean to suggest that the two of them hold all the solutions in their hands, but as a Canadian Catholic, I am influenced by how the pope and the prime minister are responding to today’s crises. Soon both will have completed their first year in office. What does that first year tell us?

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On Jan. 9, in the Vatican’s Hall of Benedictions, Pope Leo gave the annual papal address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See. “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies,” he warned. “War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading.” After the Iran war started, he said he was praying that nations return to dialogue in order to seek peace. “I address to the parties involved a heartfelt appeal to assume the moral responsibility to stop the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss!” On March 15, he urged a ceasefire “so that avenues for dialogue may be reopened.”

Earlier, in his first Sunday address from the balcony of St. Peter’s, the pope called for an “authentic, just and lasting peace” in Ukraine as well as a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages. He also called for humanitarian aid to be provided “to the exhausted civilian population” in Gaza. “In today’s dramatic scenario of a third world war being fought piecemeal, as Pope Francis said, “I too turn to the world’s leaders with an ever timely appeal: never again war!” he said.

Are the world’s leaders listening to Pope Leo? The answer is obvious. Neither did the leaders at the time listen to Pope John Paul II when he sent emissaries carrying a papal message to the presidents of the U.S. and Iraq before the U.S. attacked Iraq in 2003. Leo’s style is softer than John Paul’s. But each has stuck closely to Vatican II’s essential teaching on war: “Any act of war aimed indiscrimin-ately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”

While Leo has spoken so far in broad terms, his top diplomat, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State (see Lead Story tab), directly criticized the U.S. and Israel when he said their strikes had caused a “weakening of international law that is truly alarming,” and also that nations do not have a right to launch preventive wars.

In the U.S., senior cardinals have spoken out. “The U.S. decision to go to war against Iran fails to meet the just war threshold for a morally legitimate war,” said Cardinal Robert McElroy, Archbishop of Washington, D.C. Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago denounced the war: “A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game — it’s sickening.” I very much doubt that the highly placed Cardinals Parolin, McElroy and Cupich are speaking without the full knowledge and consent of the Holy Father.

The pope is in a difficult situation. If he directly criticizes the United States and President Trump, who is mostly responsible for the carnage because his advisors and supplicants have failed to stop him, the pope risks a complete breakdown in relations with the erratic Trump. A new war of words between Trump and Leo would hardly benefit the world. Leo has already made the point that the Iran war is wrong. It is up to the rest of us to push the political systems to get back to building peace.

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Early on the first day of the Iran war, Prime Minister Carney issued a statement: “Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.” Many Canadians were astounded that the prime minister would so precipitously — without consulting cabinet or Parliament — back Trump’s illegal attack. Further, the justification given was specious: the International Atomic Energy Agency had previously said Iran was not making a nuclear weapon and the regime, odious as it is, was not threatening world peace. His quick support backfired when a revolt started in caucus. Canadian public opinion was heavily against the war.

Four days later, the prime minister repeated Canada’s support for the war and this time added, “with regret.” He said the war was another example of “the failure of the international order.” While he condemned outright the retaliatory strikes carried out by Iran, the government continued to support the U.S. and Israeli strikes even while calling for diplomacy.

Another few days passed and the House of Commons held a special debate on the situation. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand spoke for the government in laying down the principles Canada was following: “We did not participate in the recent military strikes carried out by the United States and Israel. We were not consulted in advance about these operations, and we have no intention of joining them.” There was a good deal of circumlocution in her speech, blaming the amorphous “international order” for breaking down without saying that the U.S. and its ally Israel attacked Iran in direct violation of the core of the U.N. Charter, which says that a country cannot attack another unless it is in self-defence or authorized by the Security Council. Michael Chong, the Conservative foreign affairs critic, rightly summed up the government’s position as “mumbo jumbo.”

Carney himself was absent from the debate on the most important foreign policy issue Canada has faced since Jean Chretien kept Canada out of the Iraq war in 2003. It isn’t hard to figure out why Carney stayed away. It was the best way of removing himself from President Trump’s line of vision when he looks around the world to see who’s with him in his war against Iran. This is the same President Trump who holds Canada’s economic future in his hands with his obfuscatory tariff madness. In staying away, Carney sacrificed an opportunity to expose the phoney reasons Trump has given for the war and state clearly what Canada will do to strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty to keep nuclear weapons out of the Middle East and protect the Iranian people.

His absence enabled us to see more clearly who Mark Carney has become. He is a formidable international banker and technocrat possessing a conscience on the values of a workable and fair economic and social system, who has in the past year become a politician able to bob and weave if not as well as Jean Chretien then better than Stephen Harper. He has captured the centre of Canadian politics, which accounts for his escalation in the polls.

He has gotten this far because a rising number of Canadians trust him to keep Canada out of the clutches of the avaricious Trump. Doing so, however, carries a price. That price is the economy of Canada and the jobs of hundreds of thousands of Canadians affected by the machinations of Trump’s tariffs if the U.S.-Canada tariff deals go off the rails. It is one thing to hold a righteous position against the Iran war, as Chretien did against the Iraq war when the White House was not occupied by a vengeful president. It is quite another to hold off the present mendacious incumbent.

Nonetheless, Carney’s endorsement of war as an instrument of foreign policy is a big disappointment in the man who came to power writing about values as a strength. He has become too fond of saying what has now become one of his standard lines: “Canada is actively taking on the world as it is, not passively waiting for a world we wish to be.” When he went to Davos, Switzerland and made his celebrated speech to the world’s elite, Carney raised hopes that new coalitions of middle powers would actually change for the better the broken international system. On his first test, Carney, in backing U.S. military might as the solution to disorder in the world, faltered.

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The Iran war launched by the U.S. and Israel is more than a breakdown in international relations. It amounts to collective punishment of innocent people around the world. The wars that continue in Ukraine and Gaza are also grave violations of international humanitarian law. This is the world that Pope Leo and Mark Carney are charged with righting. Each has to figure out the best way to contribute to building peace. The burdens of high office are heavy.