Vatikan

From 911Encyclopedia:

During Christmas 2002, the media finally started to cover the Vatikan's opinion on the war against Iraq. The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, headlined its Christmas editions: "Humanity can win the 'battle' of peace." "While the clouds of war lengthen, the minds and hearts of men in all continents are drawn to Christmas," the newspaper wrote in a front-page article. It was the latest in a chorus of Vatican voices coming out against a war in Iraq, which the United States says is hoarding weapons of mass destruction. Top Vatican officials have said a "preventive" war against Iraq had no legal justification and could spark an anti-Christian campaign in the Muslim world. During 2002, Vatican officials have been increasingly speaking out against the prospect of war, drawing a sharp difference between a strike against Iraq and what Church officials had said was a "just war" against terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks. Archbishop Renato Martino, the prefect of the Council for Justice and Peace and the Vatican's former U.N. envoy, told reporters that a preventive war was a "war of aggression" and therefore not a "just war." The Vatican's foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, warned of the consequences a war on Iraq could ignite in the Islamic world. "A type of anti-Christian, anti-Western crusade could be incited because some ignorant masses mix everything together," the Rome daily La Repubblica quoted Tauran as saying. The pope himself has recently decried all the conflicts engulfing the world, mentioning the "forgotten" wars and the one between Israel and the Palestinians and its effects on the Holy Land. Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021225/ap_on_re_eu/vatican_pope_christmas_1

On February 10th, 2002, the pope dispatched a personal peace envoy to Baghdad to urge President Saddam Hussein to co-operate fully with United Nations weapons inspectors.