US envoy says pope considered Iraq war 'defeat for humanity'

LOS ANGELES (AFP) — The former US envoy to the Vatican, Jim Nicholson, recalled Pope John Paul II's vocal opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq on the grounds that war represented a "defeat for humanity."

"There was a clear disagreement," Nicholson said of the rift between the Vatican and the White House over the use of military force to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The pope, who died Saturday, "was a man of peace, and he always hoped for the peace option," Nicholson said in an interview with the Denver Post.

"If he could keep war from breaking out, there's always a chance that peace would break out," Nicholson said. "That was his position about Iraq; he made that clear to me. He also said that war is a defeat for humanity, that war is not always inevitable."

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