Pope Francis said Monday military force could be justified to stop Islamic terrorists who are slaughtering religious minorities in Iraq — and said he’s thinking about visiting the war-torn country as a sign of solidarity with the oppressed.
“In these cases, where there is an unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor,” said Francis.
His statement came while speaking to reporters on a flight back to Rome from South Korea after he was asked about the recent US airstrikes on ISIS militants in northern Iraq.
The pope was careful to say he wasn’t explicitly endorsing military intervention, but he didn’t rule it out.
“I underscore the verb ‘stop.’ I’m not saying ‘bomb’ or ‘make war,’ just ‘stop.’ And the means that can be used to stop them must be evaluated,” Francis said.
The pope also said the United Nations collectively — not just one country — should determine the course of any intervention Iraq.
“One nation alone cannot judge how you stop this, how you stop an unjust aggressor,” he said.
“After World War II, the idea of the United Nations came about: It’s there that you must discuss, ‘Is there an unjust aggression? It seems so. How should we stop it?’ Just this. Nothing more.”
Francis said he’s weighing a trip to Iraq to show solidarity with the persecuted Christians but hasn’t yet made a decision.
“At this moment, it would not be the best thing to do, but I am willing to do it,” he said.
In a show of Christian solidarity, Fernando Cardinal Filoni, a papal envoy, visited northern Iraq last week and brought an undisclosed sum of money to help refugees.
Meanwhile, in a major victory for the Iraqi and Kurdish military, Kurdish forces regained control Monday of the Mosul Dam and its vicinity.
After two days of intense fighting, the Iraqi military retook the 2.1-mile dam with the help of peshmerga ground troops and heavy US airstrikes.
Had the dam — which supplies water and electricity to a large part of Iraq — been breached, it could have flooded areas in the north.