As the bombing of Iran by the United States and Israel rolls on and as Iran continues to lash out at its Arab neighbours, the Australian bishops have issued a dramatic call for the violence to stop.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed in Iran under the rain of bombs, as the US and Israel methodically target the country’s military infrastructure. Israel has bombed and invaded southern Lebanon, with scores of civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands of people displaced.
Although Iran no longer has effective air defences, its drones have hit many countries in the region – Israel, Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.
US President Donald Trump has said that he will settle for nothing less than unconditional surrender – but Iran continues to resist. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian dismissed Trump’s demands as a “dream that they should take to their grave.”
The situation changes day by day.
Australian bishops speak out
In a statement by Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB, President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Archbishop of Perth, the bishops say that the violence “weighs heavily on our hearts”.
“As Pope Leo warned this week, we stand ‘faced with the possibility of a tragedy of enormous proportions.
“His appeal is one we wholeheartedly echo: that all parties ‘assume the moral responsibility to stop the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss’.
“Violence only multiplies suffering; war is not the answer and is always a defeat for humanity. The current hostilities have already caused immense harm.”
About 115,000 Australians are stranded in the Middle East, according to Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Matt Thistlewaite, because airports have closed and airspace has been shut down. The bishops also expressed their concern for them, including people serving in peacekeeping and humanitarian roles.
“This is an anxious time for their families, friends and communities,” Archbishop Costelloe says. “We assure them of our prayers and our pastoral concern.”
And they ask for prayers.
“Above all, we pray for the innocent: for those already killed, for the injured and traumatised, for families separated or displaced and for communities living in fear.
“We pray too for leaders at every level: that their decisions be grounded in respect for human dignity, the common good and solidarity with the suffering.”
Vatican scepticism
The Vatican seems to be taking a very dim view of arguments supporting the war. In an interview with Vatican News, the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin was sceptical about the argument that this is a just war.
“As the UN Charter notes, recourse to force must be considered only as a last and most grave resort, after all the instruments of political and diplomatic dialogue have been used, after carefully assessing the limits of necessity and proportionality, on the basis of rigorous verification and well-founded reasons, and always within the framework of multilateral governance,” he explained.
“If states were to be recognised as having a right to ‘preventive war,’ according to their own criteria and without a supranational legal framework, the whole world would risk being set ablaze.
“This erosion of international law is truly worrying: justice has given way to force; the force of law has been replaced by the law of force, with the conviction that peace can arise only after the enemy has been annihilated.”
Iranian Catholics
There are at least several hundred Iranian Catholics in Sydney, mostly belonging to the Chaldean rite and living mostly in Fairfield and Liverpool.
The Catholic presence in Iran itself is minuscule but significant. Tehran has its own cardinal, appointed by Pope Francis in 2024, Archbishop Dominique Mathieu, a Belgian Conventual Franciscan, who has been Archbishop of Tehran-Isfahan for Latin rite Catholics since 2021. There are only about 2,000 Latin rite Catholics in Iran and only three priests- himself, the nuncio and the nuncio’s secretary.
Most Catholics in Iran belong to the Chaldean rite. Some belong to the Armenian rite. The Pillar, an American website focusing on Catholic affairs, has described Iranian Catholics as “the most cathedraled people in the world”. Although there are only about 9,000 Catholics, there are six cathedrals – one Latin rite, one Armenian, and four Chaldean.
Conversions are forbidden, as is distributing Bibles in Farsi, the national language. Last year the US Commission On International Religious Freedom classified Iran as a “country of particular concern” for engaging in “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom”. Understandably, therefore, conversions to Christianity are kept quiet and there are no reliable statistics about the real number of Christians.
Paradoxically, Christian symbols are not necessarily banned. Catholic priests can wear clerical garb and pectoral crosses in public. And a metro station dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary was recently opened in Tehran. The Maryam-e Moghadass station features a huge bas-relief of Mary along with other Christian imagery. Above ground at the station is the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral.
“Proselytism cannot be done, but we are not prevented from living in society and bearing witness,” Cardinal Mathieu told EWTN in 2024. He reminds his flock of “the importance of our witness, of praying, of having a virtuous life, of working on our sanctification, because there we are truly also a leaven for the country. We can be that salt that gives life.”
