December 23, 2015

Pope Francis supports use of force to stop Islamic extremists from attacking religious minorities in Iraq

Francis also said the international community — and not just one country — should decide how to intervene. His comments on Monday represented a shift in the Vatican’s usually steadfast opposition to military force. Meanwhile, President Obama announced that Kurdish and Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes, had recaptured the Mosul Dam.

BY Joel Siegel
New York daily news
Updated: Tuesday, August 19, 2014, 2:20 AM

Pope Francis on Monday blessed the use of force to stop the vicious Islamic radicals overrunning Iraq, but he said any intervention first must be backed by the international community.

His comments — in an extraordinary news conference aboard the papal plane — came as President Obama announced that Kurdish and Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes, had recaptured the giant Mosul Dam from the extremists.

The fighters with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, have swept across northern Iraq since June, driving 1.5 million Christians and other Iraqi minorities from their homes.

The retreat of the extremists from the dam represented their first major defeat in Iraq.

In a question-and-answer session with reporters returning with him from a five-day trip to South Korea, Francis was asked if he supported the U.S. air strikes authorized by Obama against ISIS.

“In these cases, where there is an unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor,” Francis said

“I underscore the verb ‘stop.’ I’m not saying ‘bomb’ or ‘make war,’ just ‘stop.’ And the means that can be used to stop them must be evaluated.”

However, the Pope went on to say that such intervention should not be decided unilaterally, by one country.

Too many times, Francis said, countries have used the “excuse of stopping the unjust aggressor” to launch a “true war of conquest.”

He added, “One single nation cannot judge how you stop this, how you stop an unjust aggressor.”

Still, even with the Pope’s qualifications, his comments represented a shift in the Vatican’s steadfast opposition to military force in recent years.

Last year, for example, Francis staged a global prayer and fast for peace when Obama threatened U.S. air strikes to stop the use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war.

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