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."
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