March 19, 2003
The Vatican has scolded US President George W Bush, saying he had assumed a "grave responsibility before God" in deciding that diplomacy to avoid conflict with Iraq had been exhausted. The Vatican's blunt rejection of Bush's 48-hour ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein came after Pope John Paul, one of the most prominent opponents of a war on Iraq, had urged continued negotiation at the UN Security Council to avoid a conflict.
"Whoever decides that all peaceful means under international law have been exhausted is assuming a grave responsibility before God, his conscience and before history," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a terse statement delivered at the Holy See. The pope, who prayed on Sunday for "courage and clearsightedness" for world leaders, clearly believes war can be avoided even at this late stage, though his special envoy to Washington, Cardinal Pio Laghi, has admitted there are "few options left" to avoid conflict.
"We are hoping that war can be avoided, even if it is clear today that the situation has been considerably complicated," Laghi said on Saturday after formally debriefing the pope on his peace mission to see Bush in Washington two weeks ago. The leader of the world's estimated 1.5 billion Catholics has used his moral leadership to try to dissuade Bush, his military ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Saddam from going to war. Though he will soon be 83 and suffers from Parkinson's disease which has left him almost immobile, the pope's moral stature means the Vatican has become an essential stop on the diplomatic shuttle in recent weeks.
Blair, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz and others have all heard the pope's heartfelt opposition to conflict in personal audiences. Apart from Laghi's mission to Washington, the pope dispatched another senior Vatican diplomat, French cardinal Roger Etchegaray, to Baghdad to plead with Saddam to cooperate fully with UN weapons inspectors and respect resolutions. Last week, he called on Christians to observe a special day-long fast to empathise with the suffering of the Iraqi people, which he has been at pains to highlight in each of his meetings with politicians.
"I want to remind UN members and particularly those who make up the Security Council that the use of force is the last resort after having exhausted all peaceful solutions, as stipulated by the UN charter," the pope told tens of thousands of worshippers gathered in St. Peter's Square on Sunday. He voice his own personal fears of war in a rare departure from his prepared text. "I lived through World War II and I survived the Second World War. For this reason I have the duty to say 'never again war'," he said. "We know that it is impossible to say peace at any price but we all know how important our responsibility is." The pope's anti-war stance has been backed by the leaders of both the Protestant and Catholic communities in Britain, who issued a joint statement last month which questioned the moral legitimacy of a war against Iraq, and called for more inspections.
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