Pope Leo XIV gestures during the weekly general audience in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, January 7, 2026. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane
Top clerics in the Roman Catholic church who lead the archdioceses in the United States are rebuking President Donald Trump.
In what the New York Times characterized as a "strongly worded statement," the top three highest-ranking clerics in the Catholic church wrote Monday that they're questioning America’s “moral role in confronting evil around the world.”
While they don't mention Trump's name anywhere in the statement, the men said that the U.S. has entered “the most profound and searing debate about the moral foundation for America’s actions in the world since the end of the Cold War."
In the past, bishops have largely stayed silent about political issues.
The clerics who all signed off on the letter are: Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago; Cardinal Robert McElroy, archbishop of Washington; Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark.
Their examples of failed moral leadership include the U.S. invasion of Venezuela, the slash in aid for Ukraine and now the efforts to take control of Greenland.
They're asking for a “genuinely moral foreign policy” in which “military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy.”
"In our time, the weakness of multilateralism is a particular cause for concern at the international level. A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies. War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading," the statement continued.
"The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined. Peace is no longer sought as a gift and desirable good in itself, or in pursuit of 'the establishment of the ordered universe willed by God with a more perfect form of justice among men and women.' Instead, peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one’s own dominion," it continued.
“The post-World War II consensus of dialogue among nations, the sovereign rights of countries, the refusal to use war to pursue questions of national dominance and national gain — that consensus is shifting away now,” Cardinal McElroy said in an interview.
During a closed-door gathering with Pope Leo XIV, all cardinals from around the world gathered to discuss global affairs.
The three Americans said that they were struck by “a sense of alarm about the way things were going in the world, and some of the actions that were being taken here in the United States,” Cardinal Cupich said in an interview.
The cardinals were also concerned about the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of Trump's effort to stop funding foreign aid and several federal agencies.