There is an open war between the German Government and the Papacy. Bruno Kahl, the German Ambassador to the Holy See, frontally attacked the Pope’s action for peace in an interview with the German magazine Christ in der Gegenwart. The interview was forwarded to the media on October 29, 2026, two days after the end of the Assisi meeting of world religions, held under the banner of A disarmed and disarming peace this year.

Kahl, who was the Chief of the German intelligence agency BND from 2016 to 2025, protested against Pope Leo’s criticism of rearmament and his lack of support for efforts to allegedly defend against Russia, regretting that the Pope’s encyclical only briefly addressed the right to self-defence. In his view, the danger posed by weapons is emphasised one-sidedly, and overall, the Vatican’s most recent statements lack a realistic perspective and balance. “As long as human beings live in this world as sinners, they must expect war,” stressed the former Head of the secret service.

Russia, Kahl charged, “is afraid of democracy and is fighting against it”. Hence, he sees little chance of success for the Pope’s peace initiative. Rather, there is a danger that the Pope will be “harnessed to Putin’s cart”, because his willingness to talk to President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is distorted to legitimise aggression.

It may be noted that while Kahl was expressing his lack of confidence in the Pope’s efforts, the humanitarian mission in Oleshky, promoted by the Pope and in which US First Lady Melania Trump also played a role, was achieving a total success: The first humanitarian ceasefire in the Ukraine War.

Now it is clear that Kahl was sent to the Holy See to try and discredit the Pope and to sabotage his peace efforts. A frontal attack on the Pope by an Ambassador to the Vatican is rare and seriously damages diplomatic relations with that country. The outlet to which Kahl, a conservative Catholic, entrusted his outburst, is interesting. Christ in der Gegenwart is an historically liberal Catholic daily, published in Freiburg, where the current archdiocese is headed by Stephan Burger, known for his conservative positions. Curiously, both the leftist magazine and the conservative archbishop have an uncompromising, hawkish posture on the Ukraine War.

Burger, along with the majority of German bishops currently, disagrees with Pope Leo’s defence of “a disarmed and disarming peace”, and supports the delivery of weapons to Ukraine invoking the concept of a Just War. Exactly the concept that Leo XIV rejects. All this suggests that Ambassador Kahl feels he has his back covered.

During his mandate at the BND, Kahl steadily demanded more power for his agency, complaining that, different from allied agencies, “it does not have the license to kill”. In 2025, when it looked like US President Donald John Trump and his Russian counterpart Putin could bring the war in Ukraine to an end, he complained that the initiative was not timely. He warned that “An early end to the war in Ukraine will enable the Russians to use their energy where they actually want it, namely against Europe.”

This article was first published in Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) Strategic Alert weekly newsletter (Volume 40, No. 45) on November 5, 2026.

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Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das