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Catholic cardinals warn US foreign policy under Trump risks global suffering

Three cardinals in the US Catholic church have criticized the Trump administration’s foreign policy, saying its push to obtain or otherwise seize Greenland, recent military action in Venezuela, and cuts to humanitarian aid risk “destroying international relations and plunging the world into incalculable suffering”.

“Our country’s moral role in confronting evil around the world, sustaining the right to life and human dignity, and supporting religious liberty are all under examination,” said a joint statement from Blase Cupich, Robert McElroy and Joseph Tobin, respectively the archbishops of Chicago, Washington DC, and Newark, New Jersey.

“And the building of just and sustainable peace, so crucial to humanity’s wellbeing now and in the future, is being reduced to partisan categories that encourage polarization and destructive policies,” it added.

Without naming Donald Trump, the statement on Monday continued: “We seek 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.”

It was the second time in two months that higher-ups in the US Catholic church – with more than 50 million members – asserted their belief that the president’s administration had been failing to uphold basic human dignity.

In November, about six months after Pope Leo XIV became the church’s first American-born pontiff, the US’s Catholic bishops conference had collectively condemned Trump’s mass deportation campaign, as well as its “vilification” of immigrants to justify it.

Meanwhile, in a 9 January speech at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV had expressed a concern over how “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,” Leo said in his speech, less than a week after the US military action in Venezuela and amid Trump’s fixation on Greenland. “Peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one’s own dominion. This gravely threatens the rule of law, which is the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence.”

Somewhat similarly, the statement from Cupich, McElroy and Tobin said “we renounce war as an instrument for narrow national interests and proclaim that military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy.”

The statement alluded to the pre-dawn 3 January attack in Caracas that saw US forces capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on drug-related charges. It also referred to Trump’s decision to reduce foreign aid after the start of his second presidency early in January 2025, his more recent threats to take Greenland for the US forcefully if necessary, and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

According to the cardinals’ statement, those events together had ignited “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 comments attributed to him that accompanied the joint statement, Tobin said eschewing “peaceful relations among nations” risked “escalating threats and armed conflict … destroying international relations and plunging the world into incalculable suffering”.

“We cannot stand by while decisions are made that condemn millions to live trapped permanently at the edge of existence,” Cupich remarked separately.

McElroy, for his part, added: “In our current national debate about the fundamental contours of American foreign policy, we ignore this reality at the cost of our country’s truest interests and the best traditions of this land that we love.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the statement.

Trump has insisted that capturing Maduro was legal and necessary for national security. With regards to Greenland, Trump has maintained that the US needs control of the resource-rich island, a semiautonomous region of Nato ally Denmark, for its national security as well.

The Trump administration has previously said it gutted the US Agency for International Development because its projects were financially wasteful while advancing a liberal agenda that the president opposed. And, according to reporting from Reuters, Trump recently said it was Ukraine holding up a peace deal ending the war within its borders rather than Russia, which invaded it in February 2022.