A Prophecy of Esau and Jacob

Citing recent events in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland, three cardinals said their statement was inspired by Pope Leo.

NewYorkTimes • January 20, 2026

The three highest-ranking Roman Catholic clerics who lead archdioceses in the United States said in a strongly worded statement on Monday that America’s “moral role in confronting evil around the world” is in question for the first time in decades. Their critique of the Trump administration’s principles — while not mentioning President Trump by name — escalates the American Catholic Church’s denunciations of the country’s top leaders.

In 2026, the country has entered “the most profound and searing debate about the moral foundation for America’s actions in the world since the end of the Cold War,” read the unusual statement issued by Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago; Cardinal Robert McElroy, archbishop of Washington; and Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark.

Citing recent events in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland as having raised fundamental questions about the use of military force, the cardinals call for a “genuinely moral foreign policy” in which “military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy.”

The cardinals did not delve into policy details, and declined to offer specifics about the countries mentioned in the statement. They specifically frame their statement as a message larger than partisan categories. But the context is clear. The president has threatened to take over Greenland “the hard way.”

In Venezuela, the Trump administration has ordered US troops to attack boats it says traffic in narcotics, and US forces captured and extracted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife without authorization by Congress.

Pope Leo XIV has emphasized Venezuela’s “sovereignty” and has called for dialogue over violence. He has also repeatedly called for peace in Ukraine, and said President Trump’s peace plan would bring a “huge change” in the alliance between Europe and the United States.

In interviews and in their statement, the American cardinals expressed concern about the rise of a global order based on force and domination rather than one based on peace and freedom.

“The post-World War II consensus of dialogue among nations, the sovereign rights of countries, the refusal to use war to pursue questions of national dominance and national gain — that consensus is shifting away now,” Cardinal McElroy said in an interview. He was appointed by Pope Francis to the influential role of archbishop of Washington just weeks before President Trump’s second inauguration in 2025.

The cardinals’ statement was inspired in part by conversations the three men had earlier this month in Rome, at a closed-door gathering to which Pope Leo had summoned all cardinals around the world.

In discussions there with fellow cardinals, the three Americans were struck by “a sense of alarm about the way things were going in the world, and some of the actions that were being taken here in the United States,” Cardinal Cupich said in an interview. Their colleagues’ distresses included the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development last year, a decision that shut off streams of foreign assistance to the world’s poorest countries.

Soon after meeting with the cardinals, Pope Leo delivered an address to the diplomatic corps to the Vatican in early January, a speech that essentially serves as the pope’s annual foreign policy statement. In the address, the American-born pope condemned “a diplomacy based on force” and a “zeal for war” without mentioning any world leaders by name.

Leo succeeded Pope Francis in May, and is seen by many observers as more reserved than his freewheeling predecessor, but generally dedicated to similar priorities of solidarity with the weak and the oppressed. In his eight months leading the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, Leo has frequently called for peace and dialogue in thorny international conflicts, and has rebuked political leaders for what he has described as unjust treatment of migrants, the poor and the exploited.

~ by Joel on January 25, 2026.

Posted in US