Pope Francis, who died on Monday at age 88, maintained a balance in his dealings with the Islamic Republic over his 12-year papacy—engaging Iran’s leaders diplomatically while voicing criticism over executions and crackdowns on dissent.
Elected in 2013, the Argentine-born pontiff entered the Vatican just as Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate within Iran’s ruling establishment, rose to power. Their political overlap raised hopes of better ties.
Rouhani visited the Vatican in January 2016, meeting Pope Francis behind closed doors. According to Vatican readouts, the Pope welcomed Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers and urged its leaders to help defeat terrorism and extremism in the region.
Despite maintaining diplomatic relations, Francis never visited Iran, even as he made rare and symbolic trips to nearby Muslim-majority states. In 2021, he traveled to Iraq, where he held an unprecedented meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf, which Iran’s state broadcaster ignored entirely.
Tensions between the progress ideals of the Vatican under Francis and Tehran’s actions sharpened after the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in morality police custody in 2022 sparked the nationwide "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests.
Francis condemned the use of the death penalty on demonstrators during his annual address to the Vatican diplomatic corps in January 2022.
"The death penalty cannot be employed for a purported state justice, since it does not constitute a deterrent nor render justice to victims but only fuels the thirst for vengeance."
Weeks earlier, during his Christmas Day address, he called for reconciliation in Iran, grouping it with other regions experiencing conflict. He prayed for a lasting truce in Yemen and for reconciliation in Myanmar and Iran, highlighting the need for peace and dialogue there.
Francis also responded to escalating regional tensions. After the US killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020 and Iran’s retaliatory strikes in Iraq, he called for restraint and dialogue, warning against war’s destructive toll.
“I call on all sides to keep the flame of dialogue and self-restraint alight and ward off the shadow of hostility,” he said in his annual State of the World address to diplomats in January 2020.
Even as he criticized Iran’s human rights record, Francis remained a point of contact for Iranian leaders. In November 2023, late President Ebrahim Raisi spoke with the Pope by phone, expressing appreciation for his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Francis repeated that plea during his final Easter address, delivered weeks before his death.
