‘The Pope! How many divisions has he?’, asked Stalin – apocryphally – at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, in response to potential Vatican objections to communist control of post-war Poland. Though there have been periods in history when papal armies and navies went to battle, Leo XIV surely now rejoices that the answer to Stalin’s rhetorical question is ‘none’. After all, despite the military might of the Soviet Union, the papacy is still here, while Bolshevism is not. The Holy See has outlasted many empires with which it has had a complicated relationship: Roman (East and West), German, French. Indeed, during the 11th-century controversy over ecclesiastical liberty, Leo’s predecessor Gregory VII revelled in the contrast between the moral authority of the Church and the material power of the imperial state – an authority which brought his opponent, Emperor Henry IV, to his knees in the snow before Canossa, seeking absolution from the pope.
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The just war tradition is a warning, not a licence
Appeals to ‘just war’ are too often used to legitimise violence when the Christian tradition was meant to restrain it
G E M Lippiatt
9 min read
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