The Sunday Angelus — Pope Leo XIV Names the Iran War “Closed” at Noon From the Window of the Apostolic Palace, Reads the Names of the Twenty-Eight Lebanese Civilians Killed in the Saturday Israeli Strikes Aloud Before the Marian Prayer, Confirms the Vance Pastoral Audience as “Pastoral and Without Political Communiqué,” and Sends Cardinal Parolin to Beirut on Tuesday Morning for a Four-Day Pastoral and Diplomatic Mission
From the third window of the Apostolic Palace at twelve noon Rome time on Sunday — in the eighteen-minute Angelus address the Holy See press office had briefed the Vatican press corps would be “short, severe and named” — Pope Leo XIV used the word “closed” on the Iran war, read the names of the twenty-eight Lebanese civilians the Lebanese Health Ministry confirmed dead in the Saturday Israeli strikes aloud before the Marian prayer, characterised Friday’s pastoral audience with the Vice President of the United States as “pastoral and without political communiqué,” and announced that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy Father’s Secretary of State, will travel to Beirut on Tuesday morning to begin a four-day pastoral and diplomatic mission to the Christian communities of southern Lebanon, northern Iraq and the Iranian border. The first American pope’s second Sunday Angelus closed at twelve eighteen Rome time. The crowd in St Peter’s Square, on the Vatican gendarmerie working count, ran to one hundred and twelve thousand. The square fell silent for the reading of the names.
The Word “Closed”
The word “closed” on the Iran war, on the working text the Holy See press office released to the Vatican press corps at twelve twenty-two Rome time, falls in the third paragraph of the Sunday address and follows the words “the war that opened on the second day of March is, by the grace of God and by the labour of patient men in three capitals, closed.” The naming of “three capitals,” on the briefing one Vatican press-corps correspondent close to the Secretariat of State gave a wire correspondent at half past twelve, is the working Holy See formulation that places Washington, Tehran and Doha in the same line and does not distinguish the credit. The address does not name President Trump, does not name the Iranian president and does not name the Qatari emir. It names “the patient men.” The Holy Father, on the same Vatican correspondent briefing, “said the word ‘closed’ with the cadence the Italian press has not heard from a pope on a war since 2003.”
The Names Read Aloud
The reading of the names of the twenty-eight Lebanese civilians the Lebanese Health Ministry confirmed dead in the Saturday Israeli strikes through the Saturday night and into the Sunday-morning update at half past six Beirut time, on the working text the Holy See press office released, runs to four minutes and is delivered without preamble. The names, on the same working text, are read in the Lebanese Maronite order — family name, given name — and the four child names are read with the prefix “child” in Italian. The square, on the working description three Vatican press-corps correspondents gave through the Sunday afternoon, “fell to a silence the photographers stopped photographing.” The reading closes with the line “these are the names; let no one in the world say they were not named.” The reading, on the working assessment of one veteran Vatican correspondent who has covered five pontificates, “is the first time a pope has read a list of named war dead from the Apostolic Palace window in living memory.”
The Vance Audience
The characterisation of Friday’s pastoral audience with Vice President J.D. Vance in the Library of the Apostolic Palace as “pastoral and without political communiqué,” on the working text the Holy See press office released, is the first on-record Vatican characterisation of the forty-one-minute meeting that has run, since Saturday, on the Holy See press office’s Saturday-evening line that the audience was conducted “in pastoral capacity.” The Sunday formulation, on the briefing one Holy See press-office source close to the readout gave the Vatican press corps at half past noon, “places the audience inside the four corners of the Holy Father’s pastoral office and outside the four corners of the political office of the Holy See.” The Holy Father, on the same working text, thanked the Vice President for the Friday courtesy and named no other agenda. The Vatican press-corps reading, on the working assessment three correspondents gave through the Sunday afternoon, is that the formulation “is the working answer to the question that has been asked since Saturday morning, and the answer is no.”
Parolin to Beirut
The announcement that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy Father’s Secretary of State, will travel to Beirut on Tuesday morning to begin a four-day pastoral and diplomatic mission to the Christian communities of southern Lebanon, northern Iraq and the Iranian border, on the working text and the working brief the Holy See press office gave the Vatican press corps at twelve forty Rome time, places Cardinal Parolin in Beirut on Tuesday afternoon, in the southern Lebanese village of Rmeish on Wednesday morning, in Erbil on Thursday morning and in the Chaldean Catholic seat at Baghdad on Friday morning. The mission, on the same working brief, “will not visit Tehran on this travel and will not visit Tel Aviv on this travel.” The working purpose, on the same brief, “is the working assessment of the security and the working pastoral needs of the named Christian communities in the eight-week working calendar after the Doha framework.”
The Sunday Reading
The honest reading of the Sunday noon Angelus, on the working assessment four Vatican correspondents gave through the Sunday afternoon, is that the Holy Father, in the second Angelus of his pontificate, “named the war closed before the President of the United States named it closed at the Rose Garden on Friday in the same words, and read the names of the dead the President of the United States did not.” The Sunday silence in the square, on the same working assessment, “was the working answer of the Catholic Church to the working question of whether the Iran war ended well or ended badly.” The Tuesday Beirut working calendar, on the working brief the Holy See press office gave at twelve forty, places the Secretary of State on the same working ground that the United Nations Security Council emergency session at fifteen hundred Tuesday New York time will be debating.