Bush must answer to God

Vatican issues brief statement, while pope pleads for peace

By JOHN NORTON
Catholic News Service
Vatican City

The Vatican statement March 18 came a day after Bush gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons a 48-hour ultimatum to leave Iraq to avoid military conflict.

"Whoever decides that all the peaceful means made available under international law are exhausted assumes a grave responsibility before God, his conscience and history," said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls.

The one-sentence statement did not mention Bush or any other international leaders by name.

For months, the Vatican has spoken out against a possible war, calling on all sides to pursue diplomacy to avoid a fresh conflict.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he spoke with the Vatican foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, March 18 and told him, "We understand the pope's concern."

Powell said Saddam - not the United States - was responsible for bringing on war by his failure to accept the peaceful solution of complying fully with UN disarmament resolutions.

In one of his most impassioned public pleas, Pope John Paul said March 16 that war would have "tremendous consequences" for Iraqi civilians and for the equilibrium of the entire Middle East and could foment new forms of extremism.

He called on Saddam to cooperate urgently and fully with the international community "to eliminate any motive for armed intervention." The pope also asked member nations of the UN Security Council to respect their own UN charter, which allows the use of force only as a last resort, when all peaceful means have been exhausted.

"Democratization through war is a utopia." - Cardinal Pio Laghi

The pope appeared unusually animated and spoke in a strong voice from his apartment window. His words were applauded by thousands of well-wishers, many of them waving rainbow-coloured peace flags.

Then, in a rare departure from his prepared text, the 82-year-old pope said that as a survivor of the Second World War in Poland he felt "a duty to remind the younger generations of this experience, and to tell them: 'War, never again!'"

That does not mean the Church is asking for "peace at any price," he said, but it wants to highlight the "great, very great responsibility" that world leaders face when it comes to decisions on war.

And in the final hours of a U.S. countdown to military strikes against Iraq, the pope offered an impassioned prayer for the populations who are "threatened by war."

The pope made his remarks during the weekly general audience March 19, the deadline of a U.S. ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons to leave Iraq or face war. The day also marked the feast of St. Joseph, patron of the universal Church.

His voice shaking with emotion, the 82-year-old pontiff prayed that St. Joseph, "man of peace that he was, obtain for all humanity, especially for the peoples threatened in these hours by war, the precious gift of harmony and peace."

Bush, issuing his ultimatum during a television address from the White House, said war would be an act of self-defence against a country that had ties to terrorists and was still trying to amass, hide and develop biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

"The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities," Bush said. "So we will rise to ours."

The pope had sent a personal envoy to Bush earlier in March to urge that the Iraqi crisis be solved peacefully through the United Nations.

After returning to Rome and briefing the pope March 15, the envoy, retired Italian Cardinal Pio Laghi, criticized what he called a rush to war in Iraq and said it was an illusion to think democracy can be imposed through military force.

"Democratization through war is a utopia. It is well-known that growth in democracy takes a long time," he said in an interview published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Laghi, a former ambassador to the United States, said there was a serious risk that a U.S.-led war with a few Western allies would be seen by many Muslims as a "Christian" war against Islam. Hatred and terrorism can be expected to increase as a result, he said.

He said a key part of the Vatican's concern was maintaining the authority of the United Nations. This authority has been endangered by "those who demanded too much too soon" on a complicated question like disarmament in Iraq.

At the same time, the cardinal said, other members of the UN Security Council may have involuntarily weakened the pressure on Iraq to disarm by publicly opposing the United States.

Laghi said he told Bush the pope would no doubt keep up his strong anti-war statements if the United States attacks Iraq.

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