Antiwar feeling remains strong across globe: Pope leads Catholic voices decrying U.S. military action in Iraq

National Catholic Reporter, April 4, 2003 by John L. Allen, Jr.

In Japan, Archbishop Leo Jun Ikenaga of Osaka, president of the Catholic charity Caritas, called on Japanese Catholics to protest the war.

"The attempt to use military force in the fight against terrorism is dragging the world into a spiral of violence where hatred nurtures more hatred," Ikenaga said. "We must stand up and call for an immediate end to this war."

Prior to the beginning of hostilities, Catholic leaders in Bangladesh, Brunei, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam had denounced any attack on Iraq.

Perhaps the most dramatic expression of Catholic opposition to date came from New Zealand. A Catholic priest named Fr. Peter Murnane and Nicholas Drake, a Catholic activist, used an appointment with U.S. Consul Douglas Berry, purportedly to read him an antiwar statement, to pour a cross of blood on his carpet.

Murnane and Drake said the U.S. administration was "spilling great quantities of blood on the soft of Iraq. We now make the sign of the cross with our blood on the floor, in this outpost of the United States."

The local bishop, Patrick Dunn, described the gesture as "offensive," asking to be sent the bill for cleaning the carpet.

Reacting to the increasingly sharp global antiwar drive, some Catholics say the church is going too far; others not far enough.

Some conservative Catholics are wary of the way the pope's message has been embraced by the secular left. Observers in Rome see a recalibration underway in public statements from the Vatican and other Catholic leaders in response to the perception of ideological imbalance.

On March 20, in the Vatican's first public comment after the war started, press spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls offered a deliberately balanced appraisal.

"On the one hand, the Holy See laments that the Iraqi government has not received the resolutions of the United Nations and the appeal of the pope, that asked for disarmament of the country," the statement said. "On the other hand, the Holy See deplores that the route of negotiations was interrupted, according to international law, for a pacific solution of the Iraqi drama."

Navarro worked out the statement in close collaboration with the Secretariat of State, where the Vatican's diplomatic line is set.

Some news agencies reported March 24 that the Vatican had spurned an American request to cut diplomatic ties with Iraq. Diplomatic sources told NCR, however, that while the Americans had informed the Holy See of its general concerns about Iraqi diplomats, they did not make any specific request for action, and hence there was nothing for the Vatican to spurn.

On March 24, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the pope's vicar for the Rome diocese, warned in a speech to the bishops' conference that the church's peace message is susceptible to ideological abuse.

Ruini called for "constant discernment ... in order that the commitment to peace not be confused with markedly different objectives and interests, or polluted by arguments that are really based upon conflict."