Nobody expected the Church’s just war tradition to be a key part of the encyclical Fratelli Tutti, but another of Pope Francis’s footnotes has engaged the issue. At the same time, a recent argument over the decision to use the atomic bomb in Japan seventy-five years ago has revisited a similar question.
Four years ago in Amoris Laetitia, the Holy Father dealt, by means of an ambiguous footnote, with the vexed question of whether those living in invalid marriages could be admitted to the sacraments. Later, aboard the papal plane, he said that he did not recall it. Now there is something similar in Fratelli Tutti: In note 242, he writes that “we no longer uphold” the teaching of St. Augustine on just war.
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