Three U.S. Catholic cardinals urged the Trump administration to use a “moral compass” in foreign policy, warning that recent U.S. military action in Venezuela, threats to acquire Greenland and cuts to foreign aid could cause “vast suffering” instead of promoting peace.
In a joint statement on Monday, Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of Washington and Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, said without a moral vision the foreign-policy debate is mired in “polarization, partisanship, and narrow economic and social interests.” They said the United States and the world were “adrift morally” on how Washington addresses issues abroad.
McElroy told The Associated Press that “Most of the United States and the world are adrift morally in terms of foreign policy,” adding, “I still believe the United States has a tremendous impact upon the world.” Tobin described the moral compass the cardinals said they want the U.S. to use globally, saying, “It can’t be that my prosperity is predicated on inhuman treatment of others,” and that “The real argument isn’t just my right or individual rights, but what is the common good.”
The cardinals’ statement cited Venezuela, Greenland and Ukraine, saying they “raised basic questions about the use of military force and the meaning of peace.” It also pointed to cuts to foreign aid that the Trump administration initiated last year. The statement said the signatories “renounce war as an instrument for narrow national interests” and that military action must be a last resort “in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy.”
They said the aim was “a foreign policy that respects and advances the right to human life, religious liberty, and the enhancement of human dignity throughout the world,” especially through “economic assistance.” The three cardinals said they were not trying to criticize a political party, but to encourage the U.S. to regain “its moral standing in the world” with an ethically guided foreign policy that seeks the common good.
The statement came after the cardinals took as a starting point a major foreign policy address that Pope Leo XIV delivered Jan. 9 to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See. The speech, delivered almost entirely in English, was described as Leo’s most substantial critique of U.S. foreign policy, including a denouncement of nations using force to assert dominion worldwide and “completely undermining” peace and the post-World War II international legal order. While Leo did not name individual countries, the article said the speech came amid the backdrop of a recent U.S. operation in Venezuela, U.S. threats to take Greenland and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was consulted on the statement. The president of the bishops’ conference, Archbishop Paul Coakley, “supports the emphasis placed by the cardinals on Pope Leo’s teaching in these times,” spokesperson Chieko Noguchi said. The White House did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’s request for comment on Monday.
The report said the intervention was unusual and marked the second time in as many months that members of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy had asserted their voice against a Trump administration that many believe is not upholding basic tenets of human dignity. It cited a November condemnation by the U.S. conference of Catholic bishops of the administration’s mass deportation of migrants and “vilification” of them in public discourse.
In interviews, Cupich and McElroy said the signatories were inspired to issue the statement after hearing from fellow cardinals during a Jan. 7-8 meeting at the Vatican. Cupich said Leo’s nearly 45-minute speech to the diplomatic corps gave them the language they needed, describing how they could “piggyback on” the pope’s words. Cupich also said the prosecution of Nicolás Maduro could be seen positively, but not in the way it was portrayed through a U.S. military incursion into a sovereign country, saying, “When we go ahead and do it in such a way that is portrayed as saying, ‘Because we can do it, we’re going to do it, that might makes right’ — that’s a troublesome development,” and emphasizing, “There’s the rule of law that should be followed.”
The article said Trump has insisted that capturing Maduro was legal, and that Trump has argued repeatedly that the U.S. needs control of Greenland, a resource-rich island in a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, for national security. It added that the Trump administration last year significantly gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the report said prompted Tobin to lament the retreat in USAID assistance.
Tobin said the cardinals’ key aim was not to endorse any political movement. “We’re not endorsing a political party or a political movement,” Tobin said, adding that “the faithful in the pews and all people of good will have a role to play.” He said, “They can make an argument of basic human decency.”