Critics Assail the Vatican for Honoring an Envoy of Iran’s Blood Soaked Regime

While the Vatican minimizes the significance of honoring an Islamic Republic diplomat, Tehran praises the award to a man “steeped in Khomeinism” as a sign of Pope Leo XIV’s approval of its regime’s promotion of “peace.”Coming on the heels of a rift between President Trump and Pope Leo over the Iran war, awarding the Grand Cross of the Pontifical Order of Pius IX to Tehran’s ambassador to the Holy See, Mohammad Hossein Mokhtari, seems ill-timed at best. Last week our secretary of state, Marco Rubio, traveled to the Vatican to mend fences. Beyond world politics, bestowing the honors to a representative of a regime responsible for murdering tens of thousands of its peaceful opponents is angering Catholic believers living under oppressive conditions. “I was born a Catholic and I’ll die a Catholic,” an opponent of the Cuban regime who has spent years in Cuban prisons, Jose Alfredo Gutierrez-Solana, tells the Sun. Christians, he notes, were among the tens of thousands who were killed in Iran in recent months.“The free world requires leaders who will step up to their responsibility to speak for those who have no voice, and certainly not for those who aid and abet crimes stemming from ideologies which do not recognize human dignity,” Mr. Gutierrez-Solana says. “The regime represented at the Vatican by Ayatollah Mokhtari murdered up to 30,000 of its own people demonstrating against it in January,” a former Catholic conservative journalist, Rod Dreher, writes. “Too bad none of them are around to receive papal honors for their extraordinary contributions.”The Iranian regime’s ambassador is far from the run-of-the-mill intellectual-diplomat that Vatican defenders attempt to portray. Mr. Mokhtari “spent years in academic centers in Iran steeped in Khomeinism,” the policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brodsky, tells the Sun.Ayatollah Mokhtari is affiliated with the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, formerly headed by the late Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, a hardliner who was “antisemitic, intolerant, and extremely repressive,” Mr. Brodsky notes. The Vatican claims bestowing one of its highest honorary distinctions on Ambassador Mokhtari is but a routine act, awarded to any ambassador to the Holy See after serving there for at least two years. The American embassy at the Vatican also echoes that line. Thirteen ambassadors were recently given this distinction, the American embassy to the Holy See noted on X on Tuesday. It “is a personal recognition and does not imply support or opposition to any policy or country.”Tehran, though, claims the honor validates its policies. The Vatican’s “most distinguished knighthood is typically conferred upon ambassadors and prominent figures who have played a significant role in strengthening diplomatic ties and serving the cause of peace and dialogue,” an English-language regime website, Press TV, reckons. It was “bestowed upon the Iranian envoy after Pope Leo XIV condemned the US-Israeli aggression against Iran,” it adds. “God does not bless any conflict,” Pope Leo said recently, referring to the Iran war. He got a quick response from Mr. Trump, who called the Chicago-born pontiff “weak on crime and soft on foreign policy.” Vice President Vance, a convert to Catholicism, echoed the criticism, saying the pope should “stay out of politics.”Pope Leo told reporters afterwards that he is “not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel.” Mr. Rubio then went to Rome for a meeting with the Pope that “underscored the strong relationship between the United States and the Holy See and their shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity,” the Department of State’s spokesman, Tommy Pigott, said in a statement. Anger over bestowing a prize on the Islamic Republic’s envoy seems to ignore Mr. Vance’s advice against dabbling in politics. Nor is it the first time the Catholic Church has sided with dictators. Pope Pius XII was criticized for staying mum on Hitler’s crimes, even as the church maintained that he preferred quiet diplomacy over loud proclamations.Earlier in the 20th century, the Order of Pius award was bestowed on a Venezuelan dictator, Juan Vicente Gomez. He had “jailed priests and had them killed,” a Caracas-based political scientist, Luis Vivanco Saavedro, tells the Sun.The Vatican rewarded the dictator’s “cruelty against his enemies” then, just as Pope Leo is now rewarding the Iranian regime that “for more than a year has repressed a protest movement with extreme severity.” Mr. Sacaedro, who is an avowed Catholic, adds, “I certainly do not understand it. May God illuminate me.”

Critics Assail the Vatican for Honoring an Envoy of Iran’s Blood Soaked Regime

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