Whose God? Whose War?

An American pope and an American defense secretary both claim to speak for Christianity. But one of them holds worship services inside the Pentagon.

When the moral objection comes from a native son of Chicago, the usual "America First" rhetoric hits a snag. Photo by Coronel G on Unsplash

On Palm Sunday, March 29, 2026, Pope Leo XIV stood in St. Peter’s Square, declaring, “Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” he said. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’”

The words were not abstract. They landed hours after Israeli police had turned back Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, from celebrating Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the first such denial in centuries.

The cardinal and the custos of the Holy Land, Father Francesco Ielpo, OFM, had approached the church privately, without procession. Security concerns tied to the one-month-old U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran were given as reason for their denial of access by the Israeli forces. Netanyahu later reversed the restriction, but the image lingered: even sacred spaces are subordinated to wartime logistics.

Four days earlier, on March 25, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had led a Christian worship service inside the Pentagon. He read from Psalm 144: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle,” and prayed for American troops to exercise “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Hegseth carried a Bible stamped with a Jerusalem Cross and the Crusader motto “Deus Vult.” Earlier in the month, he had told CBS News that “the providence of our almighty God” was protecting U.S. forces in Iran.

These were not fringe remarks. They occurred amid more than 200 complaints to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation from service members across fifty installations, alleging commanders had described the war as part of God’s plan and Trump as “anointed by Jesus” to trigger Armageddon. Thirty Democratic members of Congress had already asked the Pentagon inspector general to investigate whether Hegseth’s rhetoric had filtered into the chain of command. The pontiff has been less than impressed with the rhetoric.

Heated Rivalry

The conventional story frames this as another round of papal moralizing against sovereign power. Popes have criticized American wars before. What makes the moment distinct is the symmetry. Both men are American. Both speak in explicitly Christian terms about the same conflict. Yet they draw on rival traditions. Hegseth channels a strand of evangelical confidence that treats U.S. military action as an extension of divine will, a covenantal drama in which America stands as history’s instrument.

Leo XIV, the first American-born pope and a former missionary in Peru, draws on the Catholic just-war tradition shaped by Augustine and Aquinas: legitimate authority, just cause, last resort, proportionality, and discrimination between combatants and civilians. By most scholarly measures, the current campaign strains several of those tests. The pope does not explicitly name the United States or Israel. He does not need to. The context here supplies the subtext.

The tension seems more than merely theological. It is foundational and institutional. Civil religion—the informal fusion of patriotism, providence, and sacrifice—has long helped translate raw American power into something that felt legitimate to a broad public. From Lincoln’s second inaugural to Reagan’s “shining city,” the republic positioned itself as history’s instrument.

That architecture once bridged secular and religious Americans alike. When the moral objection now comes from inside the American house, delivered by a native son of Chicago, the usual dismissal becomes harder.

The Pattern Beneath the Headlines

For much of the postwar era, American leaders invoked faith selectively. Victories were signs of favor. Costly conflicts could be cast as necessary extensions of a redemptive mission. Just-war language offered intellectual cover without requiring full submission to its discipline. The current convergence of crises has exposed the limits of that flexibility. A record-long partial government shutdown has forced federal improvisation. ICE agents are filling unpaid TSA roles at airports, while “No Kings” protests take over city streets.

Abroad, the war’s second-order effects, including fertilizer shortages rippling through global markets, impose tangible costs on American farmers and vulnerable populations elsewhere. In this atmosphere, competing claims about divine sanction no longer feel like background noise. They become a contest over who gets to define moral legitimacy for American power.

The Jerusalem incident gave Leo’s homily a physical correlative. Sacred space contested by wartime security concerns sharpened the pope’s point: when power prioritizes control over coexistence, even ancient arrangements like the status quo governing Jerusalem’s holy sites begin to fray. The Al-Aqsa compound closed to Muslim worshippers, the Western Wall Plaza shut, and now the Holy Sepulchre, briefly inaccessible.

International reaction was swift. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, and even U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee expressed concern. The episode revealed how quickly the architecture of multi-faith coexistence can be subordinated to military logic.

Fractured American Moral Vocabulary

Democratic norms erode not only through overt executive expansion but also through the quiet retreat of the shared moral vocabulary that once constrained or ennobled them. When perpetual crisis becomes a governing mode—war abroad, funding lapses at home—the republic loses the soft scaffolding of civic faith that helps translate raw interest into collective purpose.

In its place, a fragmented landscape is emerging. Transnational institutions like the Catholic Church under an American pope assert independent claims on conscience. At the same time, elements inside the executive branch repurpose religious language for martial ends. The result is not a simple clash between secularism and faith. It’s a rivalry within Christianity itself over the relationship between power and restraint.

Leo’s intervention won’t halt operations or resolve the funding impasse. Its power lies elsewhere. It accelerates a longer shift. Future U.S. leaders will find it harder to wrap force in transcendent claims without contestation from global voices and a more skeptical domestic public. Catholic voters, roughly seventy million Americans and a key swing demographic, do not vote as a bloc, but their moral sensibilities have historically been shaped by Rome’s timing and tone. As we approach midterms and the ‘28 election cycle, alienating a powerful base is a risky move.

John Paul II’s opposition to the 2003 Iraq War did not stop the invasion, yet it fractured the moral consensus that sustained it. Leo XIV, speaking from a position his predecessor never held, turns the question inward. American Christians will now decide whose theology governs their relationship with military power. The tradition that demands strict criteria for violent justice, or the one that assumes God has already answered.

The homily may fade from headlines by Easter. Yet the pattern it illuminates will endure. When two American Christian voices—one in St. Peter’s Square, one inside the Pentagon—offer competing accounts of divine sanction for the same war, the republic confronts an uncomfortable truth. Defending democratic norms in the years ahead may require less reliance on inherited exceptionalist faith and more honest reckoning with power’s limits—and its costs—in a world that no longer grants automatic deference.

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Brewster’s Brief

The Conflict: Pope Leo XIV v. Pete Hegseth

The Question: Is the American war in Iran a “Just War” or a “Holy War”?

The History: We’re watching the Catholic Just-War tradition (think: strict rules, last resort) square off against American Civil Religion (think: “God is on our side” and “Deus Vult”). One side says Jesus rejects war; the other says God is training our fingers for battle.

Why it Matters: When the moral objection is coming from a Chicago-born Pope, the usual “America First” rhetoric hits a snag. With 70 million U.S. Catholics caught in the middle and military commanders allegedly calling the conflict “Armageddon,” we’re witnessing a messy breakup between American power and the religious logic that used to justify it.