Cardinal Pietro Parolin's Aug. 12 conversation with President Masoud Pezeshkian was well-timed.

Iran is widely believed to be preparing to attack Israel following the July 31 assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital, Tehran.

The Holy See press office said that the Vatican Secretary of State congratulated Pezeshkian on assuming office, after his victory in a July election triggered by his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi's death in a helicopter crash.

Parolin "expressed the Holy See's serious concern regarding current events in the Middle East, reiterating the need to avoid by any means the spread of the very grave ongoing conflict, instead favoring dialogue, negotiation, and peace," the press office said.

Is it surprising that Pezeshkian took Parolin's call as Iran reportedly gears up for a strike on Israel? How far do Holy See-Iran relations go back?

And why does the Vatican invest in relations with a country that the U.S. cut ties with in 1980 and categorizes as a state sponsor of terrorism?

The Pillar takes a look.

Was the call surprising?

When world leaders are on the warpath, they are typically reluctant to take phone calls from the Vatican.

While they may appreciate Holy See diplomacy in abstract terms, they are usually unwilling to listen directly to the Vatican's appeals for restraint and negotiation.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, for example, President Vladimir Putin eluded Pope Francis' attempts at a direct conversation.

Why was Pezeshkian willing to pick up the phone to Parolin? Was it because he's new to the top office? Or was he expecting a quick congratulatory call with little substance?

These hypotheses are unlikely, given that Pezeshkian has been in politics for more than a quarter-century. More likely is that Iran's new president thought the call would be beneficial.

How so? An account of the conversation on the Iranian president's website offers clues.

The readout says:

"Emphasising the principled positions of the Islamic Republic of Iran in avoiding war and promoting world peace and security, the president considered and clarified that the actions of the Zionist regime in killing women and children, as well as the criminal act of this regime in the assassination of the guest of our country, are against all humanitarian and legal principles."

"According to all international standards and regulations, the right to defend and respond to the aggressor is reserved for the aggressed country."

Pezeshkian seems to have seen the phone call as a chance to present Iran as a country committed to international law, yet constrained to defend itself against external aggression.

The statement also appeared to suggest that Iran and the Holy See's positions on Gaza were compatible, if not exactly the same.

Cardinal Parolin, it said, noted that the Vatican wished to see "an immediate end to the killing of civilians in Gaza and the immediate establishment of a ceasefire."

The Iranian president, for his part, "considered the genocide and the killing of oppressed women and children in Gaza, the cowardly assassinations in the countries of the region, and the attack on hospitals and schools where refugees are housed, as part of the criminal actions of the Zionist regime."

Pezeshkian was no doubt aware that news of his conversation with Parolin would likely reach a global audience.

So the president probably concluded that it was in his overall interest to engage directly with the Vatican, seizing the opportunity to portray Iran as an unjustly injured party and any retaliatory action as self-defense.

• First published by RNS
• Luke Coppen is The Pillar's Senior Correspondent.

The question of using Francis arose when a media outlet noted he has extensive contacts with the Iranian government in Tehran and that President Joe Biden has an excellent relationship with the pontiff.

On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki (pictured) discussed the administration's willingness to "sit at a table and have a diplomatic conversation, because we are looking to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and we believe diplomacy is the best way to do that."

Having said that, Psaki went on to say:

"We're going to work in partnership and through the P5+1 partners and allies we worked through for the first round of the ... JCPOA together."

The JCPOA is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action - the Iran nuclear agreement scrapped by the Trump administration.

"We're waiting, at this point, to hear back" from Iran, Psaki said.

"The Europeans are waiting to hear back from the Iranians on whether they are open to that diplomatic conversation. So, really, the discussions are at that stage at this point."

Asked whether the pope would be involved in the process, Psaki replied: "I certainly would never claim to speak for Pope Francis or any pope. And you can certainly reach out to the Vatican if they have intention of getting engaged in some capacity."

The pope has had a long and cordial relationship with Iran's spiritual and political leadership.

In 2016, he welcomed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to the Vatican.

Last year, Iran's Ayatollah Seyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad Ahmadabadi wrote him to "humbly ask you, as a beloved world leader of Catholics, to intervene so that those [U.S.] sanctions are eliminated."

Source

• NewsMax
• Image: 11 Alive

Hadi Rostami, Mehdi Sharafian and Mehdi Shahivand, whose exact ages are not known, were handed the punishment on Thursday after a failed attempt to appeal.

They were originally tried on November 2 last year on four counts of robbery at a court in the city of Urmia, in northern Iran close to the border with Turkey. Read more

On a short visit to Isfahan during the holiday, Iran announced inter-city travel restrictions so Bushra and Nada were separated from relatives and had to find temporary accommodation.

15-year-old Nada told TVNZ that they were unable to go out: "and it's pretty dangerous, and this coronavirus is kind of getting out of hand, and we're running out of money.

We're unable to afford a place to stay at soon, and we're unable to afford warmth, food."

St Hilda's Anglican Church is in Island Bay Wellington.

Cutts recognised her in the TVNZ item.

He felt called to help Bushra, and through a series of providential connections —Hamed, a travel agent; and Sahra, Bushra's elder daughter—he created a Givealittle page for her.

However, Givealittle takes a month to pay out crowd funders, and Bushra's need was much more immediate than that.

Cutts approached the leadership of St Hilda's, asking them to underwrite the page so that the travellers could come home as soon as possible.

Through the church's Barnabas Fund, for people who need emergency relief, the church was able to help. The Givealittle page was created on Monday, April 13.

"By about 1 am that night—I was staying up late looking at it—people had given a thousand dollars," Jonathan says.

Jonathan used social media connections to help promote the Givealittle page.

Donations reached more than $8000 in just two days.

Three days after the Givealittle page was started, Bushra and Nada left Tehran on Qatar Airways, the only carrier still operating out of the country.

Through the kindness of strangers, they arrived in Auckland, after a layover in Qatar.

They were quarantined in a hotel in Auckland until May 2.

Source

• tvnz.co.nz
• movementonline.org.nz. Shanti Mathias
• Image: screenshot tvnz.co.nz

Nasrin Sotoudeh received the sentence — along with 148 lashes — last month on charges of encouraging prostitution and offering legal advice to women protesting the mandatory hijab.

The award-winning human right lawyer is serving her sentence in Iran's notorious Evin prison, often referred to as the regime's "torture factory." Read more

"There are signs that quite a few Iranians are now also disenchanted with Islam itself," a recent opinion piece notes.

"Often silently and covertly, they are abandoning their faith. Some opt for other faiths, often Christianity."

Amil Imani says where it would once have been inconceivable to challenge Iran's religion, or Iran's former ruler Ayatollah Khomeini, much has changed since he died 30 years ago.

He contrasts the situation of a computer engineer who posted religious jokes on Facebook and was beaten, interrogated, jailed for five years and exiled, to the anti-government rallies that sprang up across the nation at the end of 2017.

These rallies "exposed how millions of Iranians are now disillusioned with the Islamic Republic of Iran," Imani says.

"The rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran is collapsing," he adds.

Imani says many people "created their own version (of Islam) in their minds" before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, as they were unable to read Arabic.

In addition, he says the Iranian people had Islam imposed on them "at the point of a sword."

"Iranians deeply value their own ancient non-Arab identity and have never fully surrendered to Arab culture.

"Historically, Islam has always contradicted Persian values, costumes, traditions and culture."

Source

• News with Views
• New Wineskins Missionary Network

This is why many young Iranians are abandoning "the suffocating tent of dogmatic Islam for the live-giving expanse of liberty," he says.

It can be a crime leading to a decade in jail.

The Iranian government uses the Internet to censor and monitor activists and to enforce official religious interpretations.

Surveillance cameras watch Catholic churches.

They're looking for Muslims going into Christian churches, Iranian-born journalist Sohrab Ahmari says.

Ahmari, who is a US-based Christian convert, says there are limits on what Catholic schools in Iran are allowed to teach.

"In Iran, Catholicism is primarily an ethnic phenomenon. There are Armenian Catholics and Assyrian.

"They have their own churches, but they can't evangelise and they can't have Bibles in any languages but their own."

Ahmari says the Iranian Constitution enshrines Shiite Islam as the state religion. About 99 percent of Iranians are Shiite Muslims.

Jews and Christians have some limited rights, "but they also have all sorts of social handicaps," Ahmari explains.

"The treatment gets far worse for groups that the regime does not recognise as legitimate," he says.

This includes evangelical Christianity and the Baha'i religion.

A section of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom's (USCIRF) 2018 report concerns Iran.

It says religious freedom in Iran has "continued to deteriorate for both recognised and unrecognised religious groups, with the government targeting Baha'is and Christian converts in particular."

After facing trial as apostates, Christian converts from Islam have been subject to increasingly harsh sentencing.

Many are sentenced "to at least 10 years in prison for their religious activities."

In May 2017, four evangelical Christians were sentenced to 10 years in prison each for their evangelising efforts.

The Christians include a pastor who was initially sentenced to death.

Three of the Chrisitans have also been sentenced to receive 80 lashes each for drinking wine during a communion service. They have appealed the sentence.

In addition, based on the conviction that their church received money from the British government, two of the Christians could face an additional two-year term of imprisonment.

Religious freedom and human rights were the focus of Pope Francis's meeting with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani at the Vatican in January 2016.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Christian Post
• Image: Radio Farda

They suggested faith groups could use their ability to mobilise people and public opinion, and lay out the moral and spiritual case for disarmament.

The Nobel laureates joined with leading Vatican and secular diplomats who urged world leaders to freeze investment in nuclear arms production.

Instead, the money should be for peace and development initiatives.

"Every day we are bombarded with bad news about the atrocities ... harming each other and nature, about the increasing drumbeat of a possible nuclear conflagration and the fact that humanity stands on the precipice of a nuclear holocaust," keynote speaker Cardinal Peter Turkson said.

Turkson, the first prefect of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, was one of many voices at the Vatican-organised meeting asking for peaceful ways to be found to resolve the world's problems.

Entitled "Prospects for a World Free from Nuclear Weapons and for Integral Disarmament," the summit drew a line-up of world leaders.

These included United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation officials, representatives from nuclear powers including Russia and the United States, as well as South Korea and Iran.

Turkston said fears of a potential global catastrophe are rising to a level not seen since the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In his view ongoing discussions about nuclear weapons are "critical".

He said decisions made by global leaders about peace and war in the coming months and years "will have profound consequences for the very future of humanity and our planet."

Source

• Crux
• EWTN News
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

My wife and I have just returned from a journey to Poland for parents of United Synagogue Youth members.

We visited Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz and Lublin — with pilgrimages to the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and Treblinka.

We visited the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, perhaps the greatest Jewish museum in the world. We witnessed the rebirth of Polish Jewry, which gave me a powerful lesson in the meaning of the Jewish prayer that thanks God for the resurrection of the dead.

What does it mean to hear about the Iran deal on the way out of Treblinka?

In the words of my friend, journalist Yossi Klein Halevi: When someone says they want to destroy you, believe it. Because that is precisely what the leaders of Iran have been saying, all along, about Israel.

Mohammad Reza Naqdi, commander of the Basij militia of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, has said that "erasing Israel off the map" is "nonnegotiable."

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel, stating that the "barbaric" Jewish state "has no cure but to be annihilated."

One of his officials has said his government has a "godly ordained right" to annihilate Israel.

Iran's anti-Semitic, anti-Israel obsession is common knowledge. That is why we have every reason to be wary of a deal that allows that regime access to nuclear arms in 15 or 20 years.

The genocidal fantasies of Iran have no expiration date. Their timetable is not our timetable. They are on the apocalyptic clock. They can wait.

Make no mistake: Each Iranian nuclear weapon will be a Treblinka on wings.

But in recent days, the general, non-Jewish press has been silent about this aspect of the Iran issue. As if we would rather not remember.

Some will say this is just Jewish paranoia.

The words of the Iranian leaders are simply hyperbole, intended to arouse the Iranian masses. Continue reading

• Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin is the spiritual leader of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Fla., and the author of numerous books on Jewish spirituality and ethics.

With much patience, persistence and hard work for over 20 months, the P5+1 Group (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus Germany) have reached a nuclear agreement with Iran that is nothing short of historic.

According to the respected Arms Control Association (www.armscontrol.org), "The agreement - known as the "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action" - establishes a strong and effective formula for blocking all of the pathways by which Iran could acquire material for nuclear weapons and promptly detecting and deterring possible efforts by Iran to covertly pursue nuclear weapons in the future."

Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., director of the Holy See Press Office, said "The Holy See views the new agreement on the Iranian nuclear program in ‘a positive light.' "

In a letter to members of Congress, Bishop Oscar Cantú, chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, quoted an earlier statement by Pope Francis: "I express my hope that a definitive agreement may soon be reached between Iran and the P5+1 Group. …"

In his letter Bishop Cantú added, "The United States and its international partners have taken a remarkable step with Iran in reaching this agreement. … We encourage Congress to support these efforts to build bridges that foster peace and greater understanding. In the words of Pope Francis, may the negotiated framework ‘be a definitive step toward a more [secure] and fraternal world.' "

But unwisely some members of Congress have signaled their opposition to the "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action."

While this agreement is not perfect - very few agreements are - it is a solidly good agreement for the U.S. and its negotiating partners, Iran, the Middle East and the world.

According to the Arms Control Association, "Some critics of this deal in the United States may still believe that by rejecting the agreement and increasing sanctions pressure on Iran, the United States can somehow coerce the leaders in Tehran to dismantle Iran's nuclear program or agree to better terms. That is a dangerous illusion. There is no better deal on the horizon."

The Arms Control Association explains that the "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action" will establish long-term, verifiable restrictions on Iran's sensitive nuclear fuel activities.

For example, Iran's plutonium path to the bomb will be eliminated. And of equal importance, the International Atomic Energy Agency will be allowed to send international inspectors to check any Iranian facility of concern - including military sites.

The Arms Control Association is concerned that if Congress manages to block implementation of this hard-won, balanced and effective multilevel deal, the U.S. will have broken from its European allies, and the necessary international support for Iran-related sanctions will be lost. Iran would then have the incentive to quickly and significantly expand its capacity to produce bomb-grade material.

The alternative to this accord is a likely nuclear arms race in the Middle East, and probably war.

The Arms Control Association wisely puts it this way: "This is the time to seize—not squander—the chance to put in place an effective, long-term, verifiable deal that blocks Iran's pathways to nuclear weapons."

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist.

Showing off its handiwork daily via Twitter and YouTube, Isis has repeatedly demonstrated that it is much more than a transnational terrorist organisation - rather, it is an entity with sophisticated command, control, propaganda and logistical capabilities, and one that has proven its ability to take and hold strategically critical territory at the heart of the Middle East.

But as world leaders grapple with how to respond to this unprecedented crisis, they must first understand how Isis came to exist.

Principally, Isis is the product of a genocide that continued unabated as the world stood back and watched.

It is the illegitimate child born of pure hate and pure fear - the result of 200,000 murdered Syrians and of millions more displaced and divorced from their hopes and dreams.

Isis's rise is also a reminder of how Bashar al-Assad's Machiavellian embrace of al-Qaida would come back to haunt him.

Facing Assad's army and intelligence services, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iraq's Shia Islamist militias and their grand patron, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Syria's initially peaceful protesters quickly became disenchanted, disillusioned and disenfranchised - and then radicalised and violently militant.

The Shia Islamist axis used chemical weapons, artillery and barrel bombs to preserve its crescent of influence.

Syria's Sunni Arab revolutionaries in turn sought international assistance, and when the world refused, they embraced a pact with the devil, al-Qaida.

With its fiercely loyal army of transnational jihadis, al-Qaida once again gained a foothold in the heart of the Middle East.

Fuelled by the hate and fear engendered by images of dismembered children or women suffering from the effects of chemical weapons, disaffected youth from around the world rushed to Syria, fuelling an ever more violent race to the bottom. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian
• Image: The Telegraph

House churches are a way for Iranian Christians to gather in unofficial buildings to conduct Church services.

The Independent reports the four men, Behzad Taalipasand, Mehdi Reza Omidi, Mehdi Dadkakh and Amir Hatemi, were originally arrested in the middle of a service just before Christmas last year.

Finally sentenced for the crimes on October 6, their verdict was delivered on October 10. They have been given ten days to launch an appeal.

They were also charged for possessing a satellite radio.

The charges come as a United Nations report criticised the Islamic republic for persecuting non-Muslims.

Reacting to the punishment, Mervyn Thomas, chief executive of Christian Solidarity Worldwide said, "The sentences handed down to these members of the Church of Iran effectively criminalise the Christian sacrament of sharing in the Lord's Supper and constitute an unacceptable infringement on the right to practice faith freely and peaceably".

"We urge the Iranian authorities to ensure that the nation's legal practices and procedures do not contradict its international obligation under the International Convent on Civil and Political Rights to guarantee the full enjoyment of freedom of religion or belief by all of its religious communities."

The Iranian government has cracked down on religious freedom in a bid to stop the increase of Christianity, seeing it as a threat to the country's majority ultra-orthodox Shiite Islamic religion.

Ahmed Shaheed, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, said that it is common practice for Christians to be punished for violating theocratic laws, despite promises from president Hasan Rouhani's to scale back the harsh treatment.

An estimated 370,000 Christians live in Iran according to the latest report from the US State Department.

The death penalty is among the punishments for those who convert from Islam to Christianity.

Sources

• Daily Mail
• The Independent
• Image: Huffington Post

The reasons include the rise of violent religious extremism and the actions and inactions of governments, according to Dr Katrina Lantos Swett of the US Commission for International Religious Freedom.

"Extremists target religious minorities and dissenters from majority religious communities for violence, including physical assaults and even murder," she said.

"Authoritarian governments also repress religious freedom through intricate webs of discriminatory rules, arbitrary requirements and draconian edicts."

In its latest report, the commission lists 15 countries of particular concern: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.

All of these nations, it says, severely restrict independent religious activity and harass individuals and groups for religious activity or beliefs.

Examples include sectarian violence against minority Christians and Muslims in Burma, repression of non-state religious groups in China, and Iran's imprisonment of Christians on account of their faith.

In both Pakistan and Nigeria, the report says, religious extremism and impunity have factored into unprecedented levels of violence that threaten the long-term viability of both nations.

A second tier of countries is named, where there are also serious and troubling violations of religious liberty. These countries are Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos and Russia.

The report also highlights the status of religious liberty in other countries that do not fall into either of the two tiers. These nations and regions include: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Ethiopia, Turkey, Venezuela and the entirety of Western Europe.

Some signs of hope were seen. The report noted that Turkey is "moving in a positive direction with regard to religious freedom".

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

United States Commission on International Religious Freedom

Image: Religious Freedom Coalition

In an autobiography, the would-be assassin claims he was trained by Iranian forces and given the mission to kill the Pontiff by the ayatollah himself.

"Should we believe Agca this time?" said the director of the Vatican press office, Father Federico Lombardi. "I don't think so."

"The other hundred or so versions of the facts that Agca has given now, along with his previous claims, are a bit too much to be believable," the Vatican spokesman said.

He added that whenever he had been able to check one of Agca's assertions, he had found it to be false.

Father Lombardi did confirm Agca's report that when John Paul II visited him in a Roman prison, the two spoke about the message of Our Lady of Fatima and the Virgin Mary's involvement in saving the Pope's life.

However, the papal spokesman denied that both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI wrote personal letters to Agca urging him to convert to Christianity.

He said he had discussed Agca's claims with Cardinal Stanslaw Dzwisz, who served as Pope John Paul II's secretary at the time and was the only person present at the meeting between the Holy Father and the assassin.

Father Lombardi gave his view that the book was clearly a publicity stunt and that "practically everything I was able to verify is false".

Agca shot and wounded John Paul II on May 13, 1981, in St Peter's Square, Rome. He was released from prison in 2010.

Previously Agca had suggested that Bulgaria and the Soviet Union's KGB were behind the attack, but then backed away from that assertion.

Sources:

Vatican Insider

Zenit

Image: The Telegraph

The Christian convert, Farshid Fat'hi, had been charged with "acting against national security through membership of the Christian organization Ilam, collection of funds and propaganda against the Islamic Regime by helping spread Christianity in the country".

Continue reading

Pates, chairman of the US Catholic Bishops Committee on International Justice and Peace of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said, "In Catholic teaching, the use of force must always be a last resort,"

"Iran's bellicose statements, its failure to be transparent about its nuclear program and its possible acquisition of nuclear weapons are serious matters, but in themselves they do not justify military action."

Based on the Church's teaching on war and peace, the Bishops' Conference is urging the U.S. Government to continue to explore all available options to resolve the conflict with Iran through diplomatic, rather than military, means said Pates.

Some of the options he identified are:

• effective and targeted sanctions
• incentives for Iran to engage in diplomacy
• the exhaustion of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"The Church's position against nuclear non-proliferation is clear," Pates continued.

"We believe nuclear weapons violate the just war norms of proportionality and discrimination in the use of force. Our Bishops' Conference has earlier indicated our strong objection to Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons as it would further destabilize that volatile region and undermine nonproliferation efforts. We have often criticized Iran's lack of transparency and cooperation with International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors."

Sources

• CNA
• US Catholic Bishops Conference (Press Release)
• Image: Counter Propaganda News