WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Vatican envoy who met with President Bush Wednesday said he "clearly and forcefully" conveyed a message from Pope John Paul II that a war against Iraq would be a "disaster."
"You might start, and you don't know how to end it," said Cardinal Pio Laghi said after his half-hour meeting at the White House. "It will be a war that will destroy human life. Those people that are suffering already in Iraq, they will be in a really bad situation." ..
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/05/sprj.irq.bush.vatican/Benedict was not Pope at the time. But here is what he said in the months leading up to the war:
Ratizinger on Premptive Attack
Posted on Tuesday, September 24, 2002 @ 00:00:00 EDT by jbf
Cardinal Ratzinger Says Unilateral Attack on Iraq Not Justified - Gives Personal Opinion; Favors Decision from U.N.
TRIESTE, Italy, SEPT. 22, 2002 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger does not believe that a unilateral military attack by the United States against Iraq would be morally justifiable, under the current circumstances.
According to the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- who acknowledged that political questions are not within his competence -- "the United Nations is the
that should make the final decision."
"It is necessary that the community of nations makes the decision, not a particular power," the cardinal said, after receiving the 2002 Trieste Liberal Award. His statements were published Saturday in the Italian newspaper Avvenire.
"The fact that the United Nations is seeking the way to avoid war, seems to me to demonstrate with enough evidence that the damage would be greater than the values one hopes to save," the cardinal said ...
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