With What Authority?: The Pope as Head of State and Vicar of Christ

A Dispute Between the Vatican and the US Ambassador

The Vatican issued a rare public criticism of the United States ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, earlier this month when the editorial director of Vatican Media, Andrea Tornelli, published an article responding to some remarks given by Burch to the New York Times a few days before. In that interview, Burch insisted that when Pope Leo XIV had criticized the United States and Israel’s military intervention in Iran in weeks past, he was speaking as a head of state rather than a spiritual leader: “When the pope acts as the sovereign leader of the Holy See, he is coequal with the world leaders.” In other words, the pope’s statements are opinions with the same moral authority as those of any other political leader.

Tornelli responded that this is a misunderstanding of the pope’s role on the world stage:

Even when he speaks about war and peace, migration or how to remain human in the age of artificial intelligence, the Successor of Peter remains, above all, a spiritual leader. The fact that the Bishop of Rome, by virtue of the Lateran Pacts of 1929 that resolved the “Roman Question,” is also the sovereign of the world’s smallest state—less than half a square kilometer in the heart of the Italian capital—does not mean that he acts or speaks as a politician when addressing issues concerning the affairs of humanity.

Although Burch is not mentioned by name in the article, it is clear that he is the object of Tornelli’s criticisms.

This exchange was apparently not simply a sharing of individual opinions. As America’s Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell notes, “Editorials of such importance are always approved at the higher levels in the Vatican, and America has learned that [Tornelli’s] text was no exception.” O’Connell adds that many Vatican officials suspect “it is unlikely that Mr. Burch would have ventured such a misinterpretation of the pope’s role without knowing he has support for it from higher levels of the Trump administration.”

The disagreement between the US ambassador and the Vatican hinges on two distinct but related theological issues. The first is the complicated question of the ecclesial and juridical status of the Holy See. The second is the pope’s authority to speak in a moral and spiritual capacity on questions of political concern. I will consider each of these in turn.

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In his article, Tornelli admits that the pope is indeed the head of state of the Vatican City State, according to the terms of the 1929 Lateran Treaty. But he explains that this is a political arrangement with the sole purpose of preserving the Holy See’s independence in spiritual matters. He goes on to cite Pope Paul VI’s statement in his 1965 address to the United Nations that the pope’s is “only a tiny and practically symbolic temporal sovereignty: the minimum needed in order to be free to exercise his spiritual mission and to assure those who deal with him that he is independent of any sovereignty of this world.”

This leads to Tornelli’s key point: “Any glorification or exaggeration of the Pope’s role as head of state, any emphasis on the importance of this role, is therefore misleading because it comes at the expense of his one true mission as universal Shepherd.” As Msgr. Arthur Holquin, S.T.L. insightfully puts it in the National Catholic Reporter:

[The sovereignty of the Vatican City State] was conceived, as Tornielli reminds us, as an instrument of the spiritual mission: the juridical guarantee that the Successor of Peter would be beholden to no government on earth, and therefore free to say to every government on earth what the Gospel requires. To seize upon that instrument and brandish it as a cage—to say, in effect, when he speaks of war he speaks only as a sovereign, and a sovereign we may disregard—is to turn the Lateran settlement precisely on its head. The very arrangement designed to secure the pope's freedom to proclaim the Gospel is enlisted to silence the proclamation.

Indeed, Tornelli could have strengthened his argument by looking to the period immediately prior to the signing of the Lateran Treaty. In the nearly sixty years between the fall of the Papal States in 1870 during the unification of Italy and the signing of the Lateran Treaty, the Holy See continued to carry out diplomatic relations with the nations of the world. Most importantly, and most relevant to the case at hand, Pope Benedict XV engaged with both sides in World War I, urging a peaceful resolution to what he saw as a pointless and destructive war. This is clear historical evidence that, contra Burch, the pope’s diplomatic role on the world stage is not derived from his status as a head of state, even if the latter facilitates the former.

Pope Paul VI speaking to the United Nations General Assembly in 1965 (Photo:

That historical episode also suggests, however, a complexity not touched on by Tornelli. One might ask, why do we speak of the diplomacy of the Holy See or the pope if we are not talking primarily about the activity of a sovereign state and its head? The key is the distinction between the Vatican City State and the Holy See. The term “Vatican City State” refers to the sovereign state located in a tiny territory circumscribed by the city of Rome. The “Holy See,” on the other hand, refers to the governing body of the Catholic Church, responsible for both the governance of the worldwide Catholic Church (primarily through the Roman Curia) and the Vatican City State. Confusingly, the Holy See is often referred to as “the Vatican,” but this should not be understood as a reference to the Vatican City State.

Therefore, the Holy See carries out spiritual, political, and civil functions. Not only that, these spiritual, political, and civil functions are not neatly divided the way someone deeply shaped by modernity might expect. For one, the Holy See is a sovereign, juridical entity according to international law, and in some venues is treated as if it was a state, whereas the Vatican City State—despite being a sovereign state!—does not participate in international institutions. Second, it is the Holy See, and not the Vatican City State, that receives foreign ambassadors like Burch and which sends ambassadors known as apostolic nuncios or apostolic delegates to most of the nations of the world. Unlike other diplomats, however, these apostolic nuncios and delegates do not advocate for the interests of a sovereign state, but rather serve as a liaison with the local Church in the country they serve, advocate with that nation’s government for the interests of Catholics and the local Church, and promote human dignity and the common good. One might say that the Holy See’s diplomats are the only ones in the world whose primary mission is to serve the common good of their assigned country.

Historically, however, this was not always the case. Prior to their dissolution in 1870, the Papal States functioned more like a typical state than the contemporary Vatican City State, with a citizenry the majority of whom were not ecclesiastical bureaucrats, a functioning economy, and so on. Like today, the Holy See was responsible both for the administration of the Church worldwide and for the governance of the Papal States. Papal diplomats served the interests of both the Church and the Papal States. But under these circumstances, one really could make the case that the pope’s interests as a head of state were in tension with his responsibilities as universal pastor. As I explained a couple of years ago, as early as the Renaissance, well-placed ecclesiastical leaders like Cardinal Gaspar Contarini (who himself served as papal ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor for a time) warned that the pope’s political maneuverings were undermining the papacy’s spiritual mission.

Burch’s remarks, then, somewhat echo Contarini’s, although it must be remembered that, whereas Contarini advocated for peace and argued that Pope Clement VII’s jockeying was prolonging war between the Italian city-states and the Emperor, Burch is advocating for war in defiance of Pope Leo XIV’s plea for peace. More importantly, the ecclesial mission outlined by Pope Paul VI, as cited by Tornelli, represents the very sort of ecclesiological transformation that Contarini envisioned but that was perhaps not yet possible in the sixteenth century.

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This leads to the second theological question raised by Burch’s interview and Tornelli’s response: How should we understand it when the pope, a spiritual leader, speaks on political matters like war? As Holquin again perceptively points out, Burch is advocating for a position that diminishes the spiritual authority of the pope’s criticisms of the war in Iran:

[R]ead the pope's words through a political prism, and they become one head of state's foreign-policy opinion, no more binding on a Catholic vice president or a Catholic ambassador than the communiqué of any other government. The magisterium, quietly, is demoted to statecraft.

Burch’s intention, then, is not just to relativize Pope Leo’s comments as “coequal” to those of any other head of state, but also to offer a rationale why not just politically powerful Catholics like Vice President JD Vance, but also US Catholics in the pews, do not need to assent to the pope’s teachings on war.

Looking closely, however, Burch’s remarks also echo and further develop comments made weeks earlier by Bishop Robert Barron of Winona and Rochester, Minnesota about the war in Iran and Pope Leo’s authority to teach on its morality. As I explained at the time, Bishop Barron has argued that while the pope and other church leaders have a responsibility to teach the faithful the principles of the just-war tradition, they should refrain from making definitive judgments about a particular war: “That appraisal belongs to the civil authorities, who, one presumes, have requisite knowledge of conditions on the ground.”

There are numerous problems with this stance—not least that, historically, previous popes (including the previously mentioned Pope Benedict XV) have frequently spoken out regarding particular wars. But what’s noteworthy here is how Burch echoes Barron’s argument in the former’s remarks to the New York Times. He states: “[K]eep in mind that the ‘just war’ tradition for the Holy See does rely ultimately upon the prudential wisdom of the legitimately elected sovereign” contemplating war. Elsewhere he adds that the pope cannot make particular judgments about war because he only has access to “a set of limited facts.”

Burch’s echoing of Bishop Barron here actually helps clarify a confusing moment in the New York Times interview. The interviewers cite Burch as claiming that “The Vatican has not said, nor will they say, declare definitively whether or not this is a just or unjust war.” The reporters treat it as something of a “gotcha” moment when they point out to Burch comments by Pope Leo seeming to do just that, such as: “I believe this has already been made very clear: In Iran, the criteria for a just war are not present.” But in context, it’s apparent that Burch is placing great emphasis on the word “definitively”—his point is that, whatever the pope may say about the war, it is not the pontiff’s place to make a definitive judgment on the morality of war that is binding on the conscience of Catholics.

What’s intriguing about Burch’s remarks is that, whereas Bishop Barron had awkwardly implied that Pope Leo’s comments on the war were inappropriate, Burch is instead taking a more diplomatic approach (appropriately enough) and suggesting that the pope’s comments should be understood as a product of his role as head of state rather than as spiritual head of the Catholic Church. Both Barron and Burch acknowledge the authority of the pope, and the Church more broadly, to teach on war and peace in a general way, and, as I already noted, both resist the notion that the Church can teach in an authoritative way on the morality of a particular war. Rather than seeming to correct the pope, however, Burch appeals to the real complexity of the Holy See’s international status in an attempt to neutralize the pope’s words, but, as Tornelli makes clear, he misunderstands that status. And Burch’s understanding of magisterial authority on war runs into the same problems as Barron’s.

The similarities between Burch and Barron’s comments suggest there’s an emerging US Catholic narrative or outlook in support of Trump administration policies intended to counter the message of the Vatican (and to an extent the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) and to persuade the US Catholic faithful. Burch, after all, previously served as the head of CatholicVote, a conservative advocacy organization that supported Donald Trump in the 2020 and 2024 elections through messaging claiming that Trump was the best choice for American voters. I think it’s important to take this development seriously and continue to assess this narrative in the light of the Catholic Tradition, magisterial teaching, and rigorous theological reasoning.

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Of Interest…

• On a somewhat related note, in his Sunday Angelus address this weekend, Pope Leo reflected on Sunday’s Gospel reading, the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds. Rather than focusing on the parable’s eschatological implications, Leo spoke about what the parable says to us about God: “We sometimes expect God to do something spectacular; we want him to intervene from on high, immediately uprooting the weeds of evil. We imagine a strong and powerful God, and, unfortunately, we also model our way of being Christians and way of being the Church on this image,” but “Jesus warns us against the temptation of thinking that God is a powerful figure who imposes himself by force, who takes over and dominates, or who arrives triumphantly.” He adds: “However, the Kingdom of God spreads even amidst the weeds, requiring us to train our vision so we can discern the good that sprouts despite the darkness of evil, and avoiding rash judgments. It comes like the smallest of seeds and thus calls for patience in accompanying these processes, so that we can recognize it in the little things of daily life and in the simplicity of ordinary existence. It grows invisibly like yeast in flour, and so we are freed from discouragement and invited to have faith even when it seems that God is absent. In fact, he is always with us, and his love is always ready to help us.” Obviously, Pope Leo intended his words to have a broad application, but I think his contrast between a false God who is “a powerful figure who imposes himself by force” and the humble workings of the Kingdom of God parallels the political theology in his recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which I analyzed here.

• One of my favorite recently-published books is Sarah Shortall’s Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics, the story of some of the major figures of nouvelle théologie like Henri de Lubac, SJ, Gaston Fassard, SJ, and Marie-Dominique Chenu, OP and their political engagement during the rise of fascism, the Second World War, and the war’s aftermath. What I find so provocative about the book is that it illustrates how these theologians understood that their historical investigations delved into theological questions they believed were at the root of the political and social crises of their day, even if the topics of their works have little on the surface to do with those crises. For de Lubac, for example, these foundational theological questions included the relationship between the natural and the supernatural and the social nature of the Church. I am increasingly convinced that one of the foundational theological questions of our own time is how we understand God’s power and God’s love, how God interacts with the world, and how our understanding of God’s power is reflected in the Church and in politics. Attentive, long-time readers might have noticed that I constantly circle back to these questions (for example, here and here). That’s one reason why I sometimes write about obscure Franciscan medieval theologians and their views about God instead of only focusing on Trump immigration policy or Bishop Barron’s latest remarks, even if the latter might get me more subscribers! I think Pope Leo also believes these theological questions about power are also fundamental to our time, as reflected in his Angelus address mentioned above and his critique of the “culture of power” in Magnifica Humanitas. It seems clear to me that Pope Leo thinks that how we respond to these questions will have a profound impact on how we understand the Church’s mission and how the Church relates to our broken, beautiful world.