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.

Along the same lines, observers noted that L'Osservatore Romano's March 24-25 issue carried a front-page denunciation of the display of dead and captured Americans by the Iraqis, calling it "an ostentation that offends human dignity."

One sign that the pope and the Vatican have not gone as far as some critics of the war would like is an open letter to John Paul II from a group of Catholic activists in Italy, now being circulated on the Internet at www.peacelink.it/appeal/ap pelpapa_eng.htm.

"We would like to hear your influential voice to invite every man and woman of good will to practice a civil disobedience against this war," the activists write. "May men in governments vote against it, may soldiers not fight it, may every person walk the road of civil disobedience and non-collaboration, as she or he can.

"We ask you [to make] a simple and univocal statement, that won't leave any space for misleading interpretations."

Among the signatories are the president of Beati i Costruttori di Pace (Blessed Are the Peacemakers), Fr. Albino Bizzotto; the vice-director of Famiglia Cristiana magazine, Angelo Bertani; well-known missionary Fr. Alex Zanotelli; and 157 other priests, women religious and theologians.

As the conflict unfolds, Vatican sources ten NCR, this is the tightrope the Holy See will walk: caning for peace and demanding that international law be observed, without allying itself either with Saddam Hussein or with a secular antiwar movement that at its extreme edges can shade off into anti-Americanism.

RELATED ARTICLE: Iraqi church leaders: united in hope, divided in views.

While Iraqi church leaders are united in expressing hopes for a swift end to the war, they express different views about what the U.S.-led incursion may accomplish.

Bishop Mar Bawai Soro, who heads the diocese of Western California for the Assyrian Church of the East, was in Rome in mid-March, and told NCR he believes the effort to topple Saddam Hussein is justified.

"You don't know what it's like to live under tyranny," said Soro, who is based in the United States but who said he remains in close contact with church members in Iraq.

"Why has Iraq been brought so low? This is a rich society, a sophisticated society," Soro said. "This government has laid waste to the country."

Speaking the day the conflict began, Soro predicted that coalition forces would be welcomed by many Iraqis. He also said he was "surprised" by the antiwar line from the Vatican, which he felt to some extent does not reflect the reality of life in Iraq.

Meanwhile Archbishop Jean Benjamin Sleiman, head of the Latin-rite Catholic church in Baghdad, told NCR by telephone March 24 that his people are "anguished and frightened," and praying for a quick end to the conflict.

As of March 25, Sleiman said his central Baghdad neighborhood still had water and phone services, though he had just lost electricity. Despite the fact that U.S. troops are bearing down on the city, Sleiman said the government is trying to project a sense of normality. On Monday, residents were encouraged to go back to work for at least two hours, a request further complicated by a terrible sandstorm.