In an editorial entitled “Popes and wars in the contemporary era,” a Vatican spokesman wrote that “as people return to speaking about a ‘just war,’ it is worth recalling the teaching on peace of the Popes who have succeeded one another on the Chair of Peter over the past hundred years.”
“This teaching has gradually been enriched and deepened, to the point of recognizing how increasingly difficult it is to claim that a ‘just war’ exists,” said Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication. He added:
Reflections based on the theology of past centuries and possible justifications for war fail to take into account that when theologians of earlier times wrote about these issues, wars were fought with swords and clubs—not with deadly weapons and machine-guided drones, a reality that raises moral questions of dramatic intensity. There has been a growing awareness that war is not a path to be followed.