The news from the Middle East is frightening. It is no wonder the Pope Leo XIV, and the American bishops, are imploring Catholics to pray for peace, pleading, indeed insisting, that governments work for peace. Unless peace comes between Iran and Israel, humanity will pay a dreadful price.
Once upon a time, this country had many contacts with Iran. Americans conducted much business in that country. Iranians in great numbers attended American colleges. American airliners flew everyday nonstop to Tehran, the country’s financial center and capital.
Then, in 1972, everything changed. Iranians overthrew an autocratic ruler, blaming this country for keeping him in power for so long. Warm friendship turned quickly into contempt.
The U.S. embassy was invaded in 1979. Fifty members of its staff were held hostages for over a year. The crisis destroyed the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The hostages finally were freed, but relations between the United States and Iran collapsed.
Estrangement has meant that Americans today know little about Iran. American Catholics know little about the status of Catholicism in the country.
For 1,400 years, Iran has been staunchly, overwhelmingly Muslim.
Iran’s Catholic ties
Unlike so many places in the Middle East and northern Africa, Iran never had a colonial European overlord. When the French went into Muslim Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, Catholicism went with them. Italians moved into Muslim Libya, taking Catholicism with them. Nothing like this happened in Iran. No Catholic presence ever developed.
Nor did Iran have a strong residue of ancient Christianity, unlike the predominantly Muslim societies of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
The latest estimate is that in a total population of 82 million, about 22,000 Iranians are Catholics. Several years ago, it was reported that five Catholic priests were active in the entire country.
Officially, for 50 years, Iran has been an Islamic state, meaning not only that all Iranian leaders are, and must be, Muslims, but also that its laws, customs, lifestyles, schooling, communications and culture all bow to the Islamic religion. The government functions under an elected president, but the president is subject to the “Supreme Leader,” who is a Muslim cleric, as if the democratically elected president of France had to clear his every decision with the archbishop of Paris.
Ironically, this has not meant trouble with the Roman Catholic Church.
Iran has maintained full diplomatic contacts with the Holy See for many years. In fact, an Iranian ambassador was present at the Vatican long before the first American ambassador to the Holy See arrived in 1984.
Iran sends official representatives to major papal events, such as the recent funeral of Pope Francis and the inauguration Mass of Pope Leo XIV. President Mohammed Khatami himself represented Iran at the funeral of Pope St. John Paul II in 2005.
Appealing for harmony in the region
In 1970, Pope St. Paul VI was warmly welcomed in Iran. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani visited Pope Francis in Rome in 2016.
In international discussions, such as at the United Nations, Iran generally supports papal positions regarding abortion and other matters of morality.
Popes, in turn, have criticized harsh economic sanctions against Iran for hurting average Iranian people much more than they affect the country’s leaders.
During the American hostage crisis, Iranian leaders allowed Catholic clergy, including two American bishops, to visit them. The Catholic archbishop of Algiers, in Algeria, was permitted to celebrate Christmas Mass for the hostages.
Cordiality between Iran’s Muslim leaders and the Church, certainly at the level of the papacy, does not produce automatic, inevitable agreement about anything. A characteristic of recent Iranian history has been sudden explosions of extreme hostility towards anyone perceived to have an opposing thought.
Still, we can hope that past tolerance for Catholics among Iran’s leaders, along with common sense in Israel and in America, means that Catholic calls for peace — Pope Leo XIV’s appeals, and those still echoing from Pope Francis — will be heard, and an international disaster, devastating Americans and persons of all religions, will be averted.
