Pope to Bush: Go into Iraq and you go without God

By CHB Staff and Wire Reports
Mar 5, 2003, 07:18

    Pope John Paul II has a strong message for President George W. Bush: God is not on your side if you invade Iraq.

But the President is expected to tell the Pope's envoy that the leader of the world's Catholics is wrong.

Pope John Paul II Bush rejects the Vatican's argument that pre-emptive war with Iraq has no moral justification, but officials promise that he will listen carefully when he meets the Pope's envoy.

Bush will meet behind closed doors Wednesday afternoon with Cardinal Pio Laghi, a former papal nuncio to the United States, who said he would relay the pope's admonition on the war. Laghi is also an old family friend of the Bushes.

"I'm here on a peace mission and I don't consider war to be inevitable," Laghi told Italian daily La Stampa in an interview from Washington published Wednesday. "It is a very complicated task at this point, and we do realize the president is faced with very difficult decisions. But we have hope."

Laghi said he would deliver a pope message, and that he will discuss the two things that are dearest to the Holy See: "avoiding a war and finding a peaceful solution to the problem of Iraq's disarmament."

He reiterated Vatican opposition to unilateral action, saying, "According to the Holy See, the decisions must go through the United Nations. This is a fundamental condition."

He insisted a war would widen the gap between the East and the West and described as "encouraging" the latest moves by the Iraqi government, such as the destruction of al samoud 2 missiles.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that Bush respects the opinions of those who disagree with him and said the president is eager to "find out what the message of the Pope is on this topic."

"If there are those who differ with the president on this, the president respects their opinion and respects their ideas and respects their thoughts," Fleischer said. "He listens. He listens carefully."

The meeting comes on Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent for Roman Catholics. The church has asked its followers to mark the day through fasting and prayer for peace.

The pope has said a war would be a "defeat for humanity" and that the conflict would be neither morally nor legally justified. He wants Iraq to be disarmed through methods short of military force.

Fleischer suggested such methods were not effective.

"Clearly, the fact that Saddam Hussein has violated the United Nations Security Council resolutions means he is not following the legal path that the world has set out to preserve peace," he said Tuesday.

"The president thinks the most immoral act of all would be if Saddam Hussein would somehow transfer his weapons to terrorists who could use them against us," Fleischer said. "And so, the president does view the use of force as a matter of legality, as a matter of morality and as a matter of protecting the American people."

The meeting and Laghi's message pose a thorny political problem for Bush, who has aggressively courted Roman Catholic voters after splitting the Catholic vote in 2000 with Democrat Al Gore. Catholics made up a quarter of the 2000 electorate.

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