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The letter opens with a confession: they wrote it with trembling hands.

According to a new report from Iran-based Press TV, parents of 168 children killed in the February 28 U.S. strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in southern Iran have now sent a letter of gratitude to Pope Leo XIV from amidst what they describe as the ashes and ruins of their city.

They call themselves “the fathers and mothers of 168 children who, these days, instead of embracing the warm bodies of our children, press their burned bags and bloody notebooks to our chests.”

The city is Minab, in Hormozgan province, on the Persian Gulf.

Among the dead, by Amnesty International’s count, were at least 110 children between the ages of seven and twelve, along with 26 teachers and four parents who had rushed to the school after the first missile hit and who were killed by the second. Mikail Mirdoraghi was nine.

His grandfather, according to Iran International, said, “Mikail was afraid of the dark. We always slept beside him. I don’t want him to be alone here at night.”

The parents quote three Leo phrases back to him. They thank him for publicly calling on the world’s powers to “reduce the level of violence and bombings.”

Elsewhere, they lean on his insistence that civilians be protected and international humanitarian law respected. The line they have turned into something close to a creed is Leo’s teaching that real peace arrives “not through force and weapons, but through the path of dialogue.”

Leo began his public opposition to the war within hours of its opening salvo. From St. Peter’s Square on March 1 — the Sunday after Minab — he appealed for the warring parties “to halt the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss,” adding that “stability and peace are not built with mutual threats nor with weapons that sow destruction, pain and death, but only through a dialogue that is reasonable, authentic and responsible.”

Two weeks later, at his March 15 Angelus, he issued a direct demand: “Cease fire so that avenues for dialogue may be reopened.” On March 22, he called it a “scandal for the human family.”

On Easter Sunday, before more than fifty thousand pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square, Leo delivered his first Easter Urbi et Orbi. “Let those who have weapons lay them down,” he said. “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace.”

Two days later, responding to President Trump’s social-media threat to annihilate Iran’s “whole civilization,” the pope told reporters outside Castel Gandolfo that such a threat against an entire people “truly is not acceptable.”

That is the tradition the parents of Minab are now invoking.

Leo was trained in it. He entered seminary at fourteen. Eighteen years of theological formation followed, culminating in a doctorate from Rome’s Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas.

A twelve-year tenure as the worldwide head of the Order of Saint Augustine came next — the order of the fourth-century bishop who first worked out a Catholic doctrine of just war.

Augustine treated that doctrine as an act of grief. Every peaceful alternative had to be exhausted before force could be considered. Its single legitimate aim was the defense of the innocent. The Catechism later codified the rest: a direct attack on civilians is never permissible.

By that inheritance, a bombed elementary school cannot be reconciled with the Christian conscience.

On March 11, a preliminary Pentagon investigation determined the United States likely hit the school because of outdated coordinates from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Amnesty International, after its own forensic work, found that the strike amounted to, at minimum, “gross negligence in the planning” and, if intentional, a war crime.

The administration’s line has been simple denial. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States “would not deliberately target a school.” From President Trump came the initial claim that Iran itself was responsible — a claim PBS fact-checkers rated false.

Seven weeks on, the White House has offered no apology. Compensation to the families remains absent, and no American official has visited Minab.

The parents close their letter with the only thing left to ask.

“Our children will never return home again to build a better tomorrow, but the prayer of us bereaved fathers and mothers is that your message to ‘lay down weapons’ is heard. We ask you to continue to be the voice of the voiceless children and strive to reopen ‘all paths of dialogue,’ so that no more weapons are built, and no father or mother anywhere on this earthly sphere is forced to whisper a nighttime lullaby over the cold tombstone of their child.”

An American pope has been heard by Iranian mothers and fathers. In Washington, his words are still waiting.

At Letters from Leo, we stand with the parents of Minab — and with the millions of Catholics and people of goodwill around the world who refuse to accept that a bombed elementary school, its floor covered in children’s notebooks, can ever be reconciled with the Gospel.

The 168 children of Shajareh Tayyebeh were not collateral damage. They were made in the image of God, entrusted to their teachers for a morning of lessons, and pulled out of the rubble by their mothers and fathers.

In an era poisoned by cruelty and targeting errors that never seem to reach the people who authorize them, we remain rooted in a faith that refuses to look away.

We believe the dignity of a child in Minab is not smaller than the dignity of a child in Ohio, and that a pope who says so out loud deserves to be heard — in Rome, in Tehran, and in Washington.

This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for something deeper than the talking points our leaders keep offering in place of moral reckoning. They are hungry for courage, for truth, for a Church that still knows how to grieve.

If you believe this movement matters — Catholics and people of goodwill standing for human dignity against the indifference that lets 168 children die without an apology — I am asking you to join us.

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A rough translation from the original Persian.

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

His Excellency Pope Leo XIV, the Respected Leader of the Catholics of the World

We write this letter to you with trembling hands and a heart full of pain, from amidst the ashes and ruins of the schools of the city of “Minab” in southern Iran. We are the fathers and mothers of 168 children who, these days, instead of embracing the warm bodies of our children, press their burned bags and bloody notebooks to our chests; innocent children whose only crime was smiling in the classroom, but this crime, through the instigation and support of illogical warmongers, crashed down upon the heads of our innocent children.

Your Holiness,

In the dark days when the terrifying sound of explosions had closed the ears of the world to our wails, the echo of your peace-seeking words became a balm for our endless wounds. When you courageously asked the world powers to “reduce the level of violence and bombings,” we saw in every single one of your words the effort to save our children; those same defenseless humans whose lives you tried to protect by emphasizing the “necessity of protecting civilians and respecting international and humanitarian laws.”

You, with an aching heart and a divine perspective, warned the awakened consciences of the world that “hate is increasing, violence is worsening, and many have lost their lives.” Today, the empty chairs of the classrooms in Minab are bitter testaments to this very truth; a truth brought about by the making of American bombs directed by illogical warmongers. We thank you that amidst the tumult of war, you became the voice of righteousness and reminded everyone that lasting peace and tranquility are achieved “not through force and weapons, but through the path of dialogue and the genuine search for a solution for all.”

Our children will never return home again to build a better tomorrow, but the prayer of us bereaved fathers and mothers is that your message to “lay down weapons” is heard. Especially when America and the Israeli regime, with their excessive demands, fuel the fire of these crimes. We ask you to continue to be the voice of the voiceless children and strive to reopen “all paths of dialogue”, so that no more weapons are built, and no father or mother anywhere on this earthly sphere is forced to whisper a nighttime lullaby over the cold tombstone of their child.

With endless sorrow and deep respect,

A group of bereaved fathers and mothers of 168 martyred students of the city of Minab, Hormozgan Province — Iran