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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Peter Beaumont Senior international correspondent

‘Popesplaining’ Vance out of depth in argument over whether Iran is a just war

Vance meeting Leo at the Vatican on 19 May 2025
Vance, a recent adult convert to Catholicism, meeting Leo at the Vatican in May 2025. Photograph: Simone Risoluti/Reuters

The contrast in experience between the two men disagreeing over war and theology was striking.

On the one side was Pope Leo XIV, the first North American to head the Catholic church and the first cleric from the Augustinian order, who this week visited the modern Algerian city where Saint Augustine once lived. For Leo, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Augustine’s ideas, it was the culmination of a lifelong intellectual interest.

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