Three American Catholic cardinals issued a joint statement on Monday condemning military action as a “normal instrument” of U.S. foreign policy, pointing to President Donald Trump’s threats against Greenland and the recent operation in Venezuela.
As President Donald Trump continues to push for U.S. acquisition of Greenland from Denmark, he has repeatedly not ruled out the option of using military force to do so. The archbishops of Washington, Chicago, and Newark — Cardinal Robert McElroy, Cardinal Blase Cupich, and Cardinal Joseph Tobin, respectively — spoke of the “events in Venezuela, Ukraine, and Greenland” in their joint statement released Monday.
The three cardinals pointed to Pope Leo XIV‘s early January address in which he denounced diplomacy by force as a cause for international concern, saying, “War is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.” McElroy, Cupich, and Tobin emphasized Leo’s vision and said the pope offers a “prism” through which to raise an American foreign policy that is “beset by polarization, partisanship, and narrow economic and social interests.”
“We renounce war as an instrument for narrow national interests and proclaim that military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy. We seek a foreign policy that respects and advances the right to human life, religious liberty, and the enhancement of human dignity throughout the world, especially through economic assistance,” the cardinals said.
The cardinals referenced Russia’s war in Ukraine, along with the Trump administration’s threats to acquire Greenland and its seizure of former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. They wrote that these instances “have raised basic questions about the use of military force and the meaning of peace.”
Tobin said he jointly wrote the statement “to underscore the vision of Pope Leo for just and peaceful relations among nations.”
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“Otherwise, escalating threats and armed conflict risk destroying international relations and plunging the world into incalculable suffering,” Tobin said.
Trump has maintained that Greenland has strategic national security importance to the United States to ward off Russian and Chinese aggression with its Arctic location. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) echoed this security importance in a BBC interview on Sunday, but insisted that “diplomatic channels are the way to go” between the U.S. and NATO ally Denmark over Greenland’s future.
