Franklin Graham pushes back against Pope’s war comments amid disagreement with Trump

Evangelist and Samaritan’s Purse CEO Franklin Graham cited the Old Testament example of King David earlier this week to beat back against Pope Leo XIV’s claim that God rejects the prayers of those that wage war.

Speaking during a Tuesday episode of “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” Morgan asked Graham to reply to the pontiff, who devoted his Palm Sunday homily to rebuking those that would justify war within the name of Jesus Christ.

“He doesn’t take heed to the prayers of those that wage war, but rejects them,” the pope said, quoting Isaiah 1:15, when the prophet condemned ancient Judah for its violence: “Even though you make many prayers, I is not going to listen: your hands are filled with blood.”

“Oh, I do not know,” Graham told Morgan in response. “You know, David, King David, he prayed that God would train his hands learn how to fight his enemies. We know that God does take sides in history, definitely because it pertains to biblical history. God gave great favor to David, great wisdom to David, each time he went into battle.”

Graham explained there are only wars, singling out World War II for example, and went on to assert that the Iranian regime has grow to be “a danger to the entire world.” He ultimately blamed Iran for the roughly 70,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza since October 2023, in addition to for the hundreds of deaths in Lebanon and Yemen.

“I would like peace, I don’t desire war,” Graham said. “I do not support war, but I do imagine, at times, there may be justification once you’re fighting evil. And the Islamic Republic of Iran, I think, is an evil government. And so I hope there may be a regime change. I actually do.”

When Morgan pressed Graham again to reply to the pope, Graham noted he isn’t Roman Catholic and that he comes “from a special perspective,” though he implied he disagrees with the papal assertion that God rejects the prayers of those that wage war.

“Well, he didn’t reject David’s prayers, that is needless to say,” he said. “I believe that Pope Leo, perhaps he’s putting that in a contemporary context. But for those who take it from a biblical context, no doubt God heard the prayers of King David as he went against his enemies. And God gave him wisdom and guided him and directed him in his hands of war.”

When Morgan later asked him to comment on the Christian Zionism debate, Graham said the concept that Jesus Christ cannot return until Jews regather of their ancestral homeland isn’t within the Bible, though he believes the land guarantees to Abraham in Genesis remain in effect and that the 1948 establishment of Israel was “a achievement of prophecy.”

“That doesn’t mean that the federal government of Israel is doing the work of God or anything like that. I do not believe that. It’s a secular government. Most of them in government do not believe in God. So it is a secular country, but it surely’s still a achievement of prophecy,” he said, adding that he believes many in Israel will someday accept Christ.

Avraham Burg, a native Israeli who briefly served as interim president of Israel in 2000 in his capability as speaker of the Knesset, was one other guest on Morgan’s show, and suggested Graham was misapplying the story of King David.

“I cannot tolerate shallowness,” Burg told Morgan immediately after Graham’s remarks. “He spoke about King David. King David, yes, was a warrior, but he explicitly, within the Bible, was not granted to construct the temple for the nice Lord because, because the prophet [Nathan] said, ‘Your hands are filled with blood.'”

“Bloody warriors will not be entitled to construct the home of God, the home of peace,” Burg added, in an apparent reference to 1 Chronicles 22:8. “This is the true King David, not all of those Disneyland images of him.”

Burg, who was raised in a distinguished religious-Zionist family but has been an outspoken critic of political Zionism and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that while he isn’t Roman Catholic himself, his heart went out to the pope for his remarks, which he likened to the message Nathan delivered to David. He urged Christians to separate foreign policy from their eschatology.

“Do me a favor,” he said. “You want redemption? You want [the] Second Coming of God, of the Messiah? [All that] is nice. Keep out of my political scenario. I are not looking for to die in your Armageddon.”

Burg, who also served within the Israel Defense Forces and was amongst a small group of reserve soldiers and officers who protested the 1982 Lebanon War, added that he has friends and members of the family “who were killed due to holy wars.”

Graham’s remarks on Morgan’s show echo a prayer he made during an Easter lunch on the White House on Wednesday, when he likened the fashionable Iranian regime to the traditional Persians within the book of Esther.

Graham compared President Donald Trump to Esther, the Jewish queen who was providentially raised to a position of political prominence to foil Haman’s genocidal plot to annihilate the Jews within the Persian Empire.

“Father, you tell us within the book of Esther that the Persians, the Iranians, were wanting to kill every Jew — woman, child — and to do all of it in in the future. But you raised up Esther to save lots of the Jewish people,” Graham said.

“Father, we thanks. Today, the Iranians, the wicked regime of this government, desires to kill every Jew and destroy them with an atomic fire,” he continued.

“But you might have raised up President Trump. You’ve raised him up ‘for such a time as this.’ Father, we pray that you’re going to give him victory. Father, we pray for our military, that you just’d watch over and protect them. We pray for the people of Iran who want freedom, to be let out from these Islamic lunatics,” Graham added.

Graham’s prayer got here hours before Trump delivered an address to the nation providing an update on the war, which has lingered for greater than a month, while prompting concerns regarding the influence religion and particularly eschatology are playing within the conflict.

Last month, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth drew criticism for invoking the imprecatory psalms against the enemies of the United States during a Pentagon prayer service, asking God to supply U.S. forces with “overwhelming violence of motion against those that deserve no mercy.”

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