The pontiff, who has criticized the U.S. president, believes the United Nations should manage international crises, his top diplomat says.
Pope Leo will not participate in U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza due to concerns it seeks to undermine the United Nations.
The Holy See received an invitation to join the board in late January but declined “because of its particular nature, which is evidently not that of other States,” said Vatican top diplomat Pietro Parolin, outside a meeting with the Italian government Tuesday, according to the Vatican News site.
The Board of Peace, chaired by Trump, is designed to oversee Gaza’s demilitarization and reconstruction under a U.N.-endorsed ceasefire framework.
“One concern is that at the international level it should above all be the U.N. that manages these crisis situations,” Parolin said. “This is one of the points on which we have insisted.”
Pope Leo has been a critic of the U.S. president on immigration policy, foreign affairs and climate change, since taking up the helm of the Catholic Church last May.
The details of the peace board’s operations and potential to become an alternative U.N. have caused European nations to decline participation. EU member countries Hungary and Bulgaria did signal that they would join the board during a ceremony in Davos, Switzerland last month.
While the EU will not join Trump’s organization, it is sending Dubravka Šuica, the European commissioner for the Mediterranean, to Washington for the board’s first formal meeting this Thursday.
The White House declined to comment.