Transcript
A (0:00)
Hello, everyone. I am jvl here with my old friend Ed Condon. We're going to do some Pope Leo talk, some JD Vance talk, some Vatican talk, some anti pope talk. And Ed is from my favorite Catholic news source, the Pillar. You can find them on substack@thepillarcatholic.com Is that right, Ed? Do I have that?
B (0:25)
That is right.
A (0:26)
The Pillar, Catholic.com I. I'm a founding member over there. God, I love the Pillar so much. So, Ed, we've had some things which are normal and some things which are not normal. The normal stuff is there is a war and the Pope is against it. This is a thing which is true, basically, in all times, in all places, with all popes, Correct?
B (0:47)
Certainly the last couple of centuries. Yeah.
A (0:49)
Yeah. Okay. So, you know, when. When there's a war, regardless of what we think about the war in America, the Pope is against it. This Pope, an American Pope is against the war in Iran. Pope Leo has been escalating his condemnations, and he got pretty specific after Donald Trump threatened genocide and said American Catholics should call their representatives, elected representatives, and say, we don't want genocide. That's pretty political for. For a Pope, I think. Right.
B (1:20)
It's certainly pretty pointed. Yeah. I think that if you ask the Pope, he'd probably say, listen, genocide isn't a political issue. It's a. It's a pretty basic human rights issue.
A (1:30)
I don't mean political in a bad way. I just meant, like, it's. I mean, that's a level of involvement that goes beyond. War is bad.
B (1:38)
Yes.
A (1:39)
And then we. We had word that there was a meeting at the Pentagon in which underlings from the Department of Defense is. Back in January after the Pope gave a speech, his state of the world speech, in which he talked about human rights, dignity, and talked about Venezuela. And it was a little more elliptical, but, you know, he was talking about Trump and the Pentagon people brought in a cardinal and sort of read him the riot act. Can you give me the readout on what this story is all about?
B (2:16)
So what seems to have happened is that the Pope gave his, as you say, state of the world speech, which is, you know, every January, the popes give a speech to the Vatican Diplomatic Corps because, you know, the Holy See's got ambassadors and receives ambassadors from hundreds of countries around the world and gives his sort of, here's how I see things. And, you know, war being bad is a common theme, as you say, all times and all popes. But apparently some people in the Trump administration took some of what the Pope said to be personally directed at the administration and specifically against what they're calling, I guess, the Donroe doctrine in sort of the resurrection hemispheric domination. Yeah, as you say, if that's what the Pope was saying, he was being especially elliptical. I've, I read the speech at the time. I've read it a couple of times since, and I think you have to really squint. Kind of hard to say this is all about America. It's, you know, there is a war still going on in Europe right now with hemispheric dominance being a sort of justifying rationale for the Russians. So I don't know that it's necessarily a correct read to say, well, this was all about America. But anyway, that apparently is how some people took it. Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who's the Apostolic Nuncio, or was the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States back then, which is just as far as the government's concerned. It's the accredited ambassador of the Holy See to the United States. I mean, he has a sort of dual function of being the Pope's sort of pastoral point man for the Church in the United States. But he's an accredited. An ambassador was asked to come into the Pentagon where the Under Secretary for Defense War are we calling it now? I guess Defense. It's Defense, not war.
