Pope Benedict XVI provoked a mixture of outrage and sorrow among American Roman Catholics yesterday by his apparent condemnation of military action in Iraq during his traditional Easter address to the crowds assembled in front of the Vatican, which was televised around the world.

His declaration that “nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees” was seen as an intervention in the political debate that has raged in America about the merits of the Iraq invasion and the Bush administration’s subsequent management of the war.

The pope’s intercession in the argument, which has come to divide Republicans from Democrats and prospective presidential candidates from one another, was set to spark a fierce debate about the church’s political impartiality.

“How many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world,” he said, before providing his assessment of the world’s conflicts, including an aside about Afghanistan, where NATO is mounting a fierce military campaign against Al Qaeda in the war on terror, a country that he described as “marked by growing unrest and instability.”

But his comments on the Middle East — on the turmoil in Iraq, in particular — were likely to cause the most offense, as they appeared to be a direct criticism of American policy there. The pontiff appeared to bunch all of the Middle East together when he pronounced, “I cannot forget the difficulties faced daily by the Christian communities and the exodus of Christians from that blessed land, which is the cradle of our faith.”

The church also found itself embroiled in controversy in Britain, where the Roman Catholic bishop who oversees the 40,000 Catholics in Britain’s armed forces praised Iran’s President Ahmadinejad for his “act of mercy” in freeing the 15 British sailors taken hostage for 13 days by the country’s Revolutionary Guard.

The Bishop of the Forces, the Right Reverend Tom Burns, said the decision to release the captives had demonstrated the Iranian leader’s “faith in a forgiving God.”

Bishop Burns has infuriated many British opponents of the Iranian regime, which include Prime Minister Blair, by his statement that “Over the past two weeks, there has been a unity of purpose between Britain and Iran, whereby everyone has sought justice and forgiveness where that is appropriate.”

The Conservative Party defense spokesman, Liam Fox, called the bishop “naive in the extreme” and said he had been “taken in by the clever propaganda” of the mullahs’ regime. “I think that those who talk in religious terms while practicing abduction should be judged on what they have done, not what they have said,” Mr. Fox said.

It was disclosed during the weekend that the Vatican appealed to the Iranian authorities to release the British hostages so that they could return to their families before Easter.

The pope is no stranger to controversy. In September, he made remarks that were interpreted as being disparaging of the Prophet Muhammad during a speech to Catholic leaders in Regensburg, Germany.

Extract from the pope’s Easter address:

“We may all be tempted by the disbelief of Thomas. Suffering, evil, injustice, death, especially when it strikes the innocent, such as children who are victims of war and terrorism, of sickness and hunger. Does not all of this put our faith to the test? Paradoxically, the disbelief of Thomas is most valuable to us in these cases because it helps to purify all false concepts of God and leads us to discover his true face: the face of a God who, in Christ, has taken upon himself the wounds of injured humanity. Thomas has received from the Lord, and has in turn transmitted to the church, the gift of a faith put to the test by the passion and death of Jesus and confirmed by meeting him risen. His faith was almost dead but was born again thanks to his touching the wounds of Christ, those wounds that the Risen One did not hide but showed, and continues to point out to us in the trials and sufferings of every human being.

‘By his wounds, you have been healed’ (1 Peter 2:24). This is the message Peter addressed to the early converts. Those wounds that in the beginning were an obstacle for Thomas’s faith, being a sign of Jesus’s apparent failure, those same wounds have become in his encounter with the Risen One signs of a victorious love. These wounds that Christ has received for love of us help us to understand who God is and to repeat: ‘My Lord and my God!’ Only a God who loves us to the extent of taking upon himself our wounds and our pain, especially innocent suffering, is worthy of faith.

How many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world! Natural calamities and human tragedies that cause innumerable victims and enormous material destruction are not lacking. My thoughts go to recent events in Madagascar, in the Solomon Islands, in Latin America, and in other regions of the world. I am thinking of the scourge of hunger, of incurable diseases, of terrorism and kidnapping of people, of the thousand faces of violence, which some people attempt to justify in the name of religion, of contempt for life, of the violation of human rights and the exploitation of persons. I look with apprehension at the conditions prevailing in several regions of Africa. In Darfur and in the neighboring countries, there is a catastrophic, and sadly to say, underestimated, humanitarian situation. In Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the violence and looting of the past weeks raises fears for the future of the Congolese democratic process and the reconstruction of the country. In Somalia, the renewed fighting has driven away the prospect of peace and worsened a regional crisis, especially with regard to the displacement of populations and the traffic of arms. Zimbabwe is in the grip of a grievous crisis, and for this reason, the bishops of that country in a recent document indicated prayer and a shared commitment for the common good as the only way forward.

Likewise, the population of East Timor stands in need of reconciliation and peace as it prepares to hold important elections. Elsewhere, too, peace is sorely needed: In Sri Lanka, only a negotiated solution can put an end to the conflict that causes so much bloodshed; Afghanistan is marked by growing unrest and instability; in the Middle East, besides some signs of hope in the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees. In Lebanon, the paralysis of the country’s political institutions threatens the role that the country is called to play in the Middle East and puts its future seriously in jeopardy. Finally, I cannot forget the difficulties faced daily by the Christian communities and the exodus of Christians from that blessed land which is the cradle of our faith. I affectionately renew to these populations the expression of my spiritual closeness.

Dear brothers and sisters, through the wounds of the Risen Christ, we can see the evils which afflict humanity with the eyes of hope. In fact, by his rising, the Lord has not taken away suffering and evil from the world but has vanquished them at their roots by the superabundance of his grace. He has countered the arrogance of evil with the supremacy of his love. He has left us the love that does not fear death, as the way to peace and joy. ‘Even as I have loved you, he said to his disciples before his death, so you must also love one another’ (cf. John 13:34).”