Criticisms continue to trail Pope Leo XIV Palm Sunday remarks after the 267th Pontifex stated: “This our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war, He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

Leo’s speech, many believe, was targeted at US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who prayed for “wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

The sly rebuke, which made international headlines, has drawn serious scrutiny, casting the Chicago-born pontifex in the light of predecessors who meddled heavily in politics and frolicked with far-left liberalism.

From the same Bible which the pontiff drew his aspersions, there exist Moses and Joshua, recorded to have led the Israelites into divinely sanctioned combat. Records also show David as a warrior king and the author of 150 Psalms now generously recycled in the Catholic Liturgy of the Hours.

Ironically, the Pope—just like America under Trump— sufficiently acknowledges existential threat to its papacy in choosing to fortify both the Vatican and its signature popemobile with layers of security. If deterrence and self-preservation are morally legitimate for the Bishop of Rome, the theological grounds on which the logic exists must be extended to a nation of 330 million people and the only Jewish state currently faced with adversarial threat from a regime widely known as the world’s leading state sponsor for terrorism.

Nations carry both the right and the obligation to defend their citizens. Soldiers carry a tradition of prayer that predates the current pontificate by millennia. Secretary Hegseth’s invocation of faith at the Pentagon stands within a tradition as old as Christendom itself — one the Church, for most of its history, did not merely tolerate but actively endorsed.

Pope Leo XIV leads one of the world’s most consequential institutions. That office commands genuine respect. But such respect becomes severely eroded when the office weaponizes the scriptures to justify geopolitical commentary.