BRUSSELS (AP) — The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and Tehran’s retaliatory strikes across the Middle East are quickly dragging Europe in, forcing the continent into defensive action to protect military bases and evacuate citizens caught up in the conflict.
The Middle East is home to some of Europe's key trading partners, and a number of strategic trading routes. Many Europeans live in cities such as Beirut, Dubai or Jerusalem, while large communities from countries including Turkey, Egypt and the Gulf states have settled across Europe. Europeans weren’t consulted on this U.S.-Israeli operation but are now dealing with the fallout.
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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
A Fighter Jet takes off from the U.K.'s RAF Akrotiri air base after it was hit by a drone strike early morning near Limassol, Cyprus, Monday, March, 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
A traveler checks departure times as many flights are cancelled at Beirut Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026, as many airlines canceled flights due to the conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
While refusing to directly join the war, Britain, France and Germany have said they would work with the United State to help stop Iran’s attacks. The U.K. will allow U.S. forces to use British bases to attack Iran’s missiles and launch sites.
But Europe itself is not immune. Cyprus, holder of the European Union’s rotating presidency, had to insist that it was not involved in the conflict after a Shahed-type drone damaged a U.K. air base on the island’s southern coast over the weekend. The Shaheds were developed by Iran but have already been used in Europe, by Russia in its war on Ukraine.
Wary of other attacks at home, some European countries are also beefing up security at train stations and airports.
Still, almost no European leader has criticized the U.S.-Israeli attacks. Many are satisfied to see the downfall of an Iranian regime that has for years arrested European citizens and challenged Europe’s economic interests.
Spain has been a rare dissenting voice. “One can be against a hateful regime,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Sunday, “and at the same time, be against a military intervention that is unjustifiable, dangerous and outside of international law.”
At the same time, helping to foster stability in the volatile Middle East region is a European priority. Fears over a sustained hike in oil prices, and the possibility of a new wave of unpredictable migration mean that the continent must remain involved.
Europe’s major short-term priority is ensuring the safety of thousands of citizens caught up in the war as it spreads.
Concerns about getting people out were raised during an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers over the weekend. No joint evacuation effort was launched, but one could be needed imminently.
Germany says that about 30,000 German tourists are stuck on cruise ships, in hotels or at closed airports and cannot get back home because of the conflict. Most of them are in the Middle East but some are further afield, stranded because their travel connections run through Abu Dhabi, Qatar or Dubai. A military evacuation was not possible due to airspace closures.
The Czech Republic, meanwhile, has sent two planes to Egypt and Jordan to bring home Czech nationals, dozens of whom have traveled by bus from Israel. Another four planes were to be sent to Oman to pick up more of the estimated 6,700 Czechs in the region.
Iran has been threatening ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes, and ships have been attacked there. Calls have mounted for the EU to help protect merchant vessels.
In response, France was sending two more warships to beef up Operation Aspides, the bloc’s naval mission in the region. But they would only deploy to the distant Red Sea and Gulf of Aden — gateways to the Suez Canal, which links the Red Sea to the Mediterranean — to join three other ships already in place.
Operation Aspides was set up two years ago, to help defend maritime traffic against possible attacks by Houthi rebels based in Yemen. But while the Houthis have expressed support for Iran, they did not immediately announce any military action on its behalf.
Discussion is underway on a review of the operation’s mandate and a possible toughening of its rules of engagement, but no changes are expected soon.
Maintaining stability in the wider Middle East is a key European concern. Iran’s acts of retaliation in several countries have been widely condemned.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas is expected to convene a meeting with Gulf Cooperation Council countries at foreign minister level later this week, as the bloc continues to try to reassure Iran’s neighbors and other vulnerable countries nearby.
“Iran’s attacks of a number of countries in the Middle East are inexcusable. The events must not lead to further escalation that could threaten the region, Europe and beyond, with unpredictable consequences,” Kallas said after chairing Sunday’s emergency talks.
The EU intends to drive diplomatic efforts to help reduce tensions, and still aims to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons despite its nuclear development deal falling apart after the Trump administration pulled the U.S. out.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in an interview that the United States’ and Israel’s war against Iran is crucial for security in Europe. He said the allies could support the effort even without direct involvement in military operations, through logistics and access.
Rutte, a former prime minister of the Netherlands, said he unreservedly approves of Trump’s decision to attack Iran and kill its supreme leader, raising the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
“It would be a stranglehold on Israel. It could potentially mean Israel’s defeat,” Rutte told German public broadcaster ARD in its Brussels studio on Monday.
When asked the possibility of NATO entering the war, Rutte said absolutely no one believed that NATO would be involved. “This is Iran, this is the Gulf, this is outside NATO territory,” he said.
NATO troops deployed for 18 years to Afghanistan and its 2011 air campaign helped topple Libya’s late leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Officials say the EU has no preferred candidate to take over in Tehran, and in any case it’s too early to tell who might be best to back as future leader. The foreign ministers primarily expressed “solidarity with the Iranian people.”
They offered support to “their fundamental aspirations for a future where their universal human rights and fundamental freedoms are fully respected.”
The Europeans insist that a genuine popular movement against the regime arose in recent months but that it was shut down in an unprecedented wave of violence. Thousands were killed and tens of thousands detained.
One thing is clear. The EU is unlikely to back any leadership pushed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The IRGC was added the bloc’s terror list last month, making it almost impossible for the Europeans to take them seriously as an interlocutor.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
A Fighter Jet takes off from the U.K.'s RAF Akrotiri air base after it was hit by a drone strike early morning near Limassol, Cyprus, Monday, March, 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
A traveler checks departure times as many flights are cancelled at Beirut Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026, as many airlines canceled flights due to the conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology on Monday for the Holy See's role in legitimizing slavery and for having failed to condemn it for centuries, calling the Vatican’s record a “wound in Christian memory.”
Past popes have apologized for Christians’ involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But no pope had ever publicly acknowledged, much less apologized for, the role that past popes played in giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave “infidels.”
History’s first U.S.-born pope, whose family history includes both enslaved people and slave owners, delivered the apology in his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” (Magnificent Humanity), which was released Monday.
The sweeping manifesto is about safeguarding humanity in an era of increasing reliance on artificial intelligence. Leo raised the slave trade in relation to what he called the new forms of slavery and colonialism that the digital revolution is fueling.
Black American Catholics, activists and scholars have long called for the Holy See to atone for its role in the colonial-era trade in human beings, beyond generic apologies for the involvement of individual Christians.
“It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord,” Leo wrote. “For this, in the name of the church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”
Shannen Dee Williams, historian at the University of Dayton and author of the 2022 history of American Black Catholic nuns, “Subversive Habits,” welcomed the apology as a "monumental step toward the kind of essential truth-telling and reparation that many Catholics have prayed and worked to witness.”
“The Catholic Church has never been an innocent bystander in the history of white supremacy," said Williams. “Black Catholics have waited a long time to hear the Vatican speak honestly about the church’s leading roles in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery--and thus by extension the enduring systems of anti-Black racism in the world today.”
The Vatican has insisted that it always upheld the dignity of all human beings as children of God. But a series of 15th-century directives from the Vatican authorized Portuguese sovereigns to conquer Africa and the Americas and enslave non-Christians.
In 1452, for example, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which gave the Portuguese king and his successors the right “to invade, conquer, fight and subjugate” and take all possessions — including land — of “Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ” anywhere.
The bull also gave the Portuguese permission “to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”
That bull and another issued three years later, Romanus Pontifex, formed the basis of the Doctrine of Discovery, the theory that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of land in Africa and the Americas.
Nicholas V’s permissions to the Portuguese were confirmed or renewed by Pope Callixtus III in 1456, Pope Sixtus IV in 1481 and Pope Leo X in 1514, according to the Rev. Christopher J. Kellerman, a Jesuit priest and author of “All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church.”
Spanish kings received the rights for the Americas.
In 2023, the Vatican formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, but it never formally rescinded, abrogated or rejected the bulls themselves. The Vatican insists that a later bull, Sublimis Deus in 1537, reaffirmed that Indigenous peoples shouldn’t be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, and weren't to be enslaved.
In his encyclical, Leo recalled that his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, was the first pope to explicitly condemn slavery in 1888, long after many countries had abolished it. Before that, in antiquity and the Middle Ages, church institutions and even popes — Gregory the Great — had slaves, Kellerman said.
In acknowledging the 15th century papal bulls, Leo wrote in his encyclical: “Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to the requests of sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, including the enslavement of ‘infidels.’”
Leo said it wasn't possible to judge the morality of the decisions with today’s standards.
“Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the church came to denounce the scourge of slavery,” he said.
The pope said that the church has long affirmed the dignity of every human being as the basis of its doctrine, “even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized.”
“This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached,” he said.
Leo said that the church must firmly condemn all forms of trafficking related to the digital technological revolution “if we want to avoid the need to ask for pardon again in the future for having failed to respect the treasure of human dignity that is required by our faith.”
Anthea Butler, senior fellow at the Koch History Center, Oxford University, said Leo needed to acknowledge and atone for the church's complicity in historic slavery if he wanted to credibly “speak to the current issues of technological enslavement.”
“For descendants of enslaved persons, this is once again a much needed apology from the pope,” said Butler, who is Black.
Kellerman, the scholar, welcomed Leo’s apology but said more needs to be done to further acknowledge how the Catholic Church legitimized and expanded slavery.
“Pope Leo has strengthened the moral credibility of the church with this admission and apology today,” he told The Associated Press. “Hopefully a future document will explain in more detail the church’s involvement with slaveholding. As a scholar I have some quibbles with the wording, but this is a truly remarkable moment.”
During a 1985 visit to Cameroon, St. John Paul II asked forgiveness of Africans for the slave trade on behalf of Christians who participated in it, but not the popes. In a 1992 visit to Goree Island, Senegal, which was the largest slave-trading center in West Africa, he denounced the injustice of slavery and called it a “tragedy of a civilization that called itself Christian.”
According to genealogical research published by Henry Louis Gates Jr., 17 of Leo’s American ancestors were Black, listed in census records as mulatto, Black, Creole or a free person of color. His family tree includes slaveholders and enslaved people, Gates wrote in The New York Times.
During a visit to Angola last month, Leo prayed at a Catholic shrine at the site of an important hub of the African slave trade during Portugal’s colonial rule. While at the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, Leo recalled the “sorrow and great suffering” Angolans endured for centuries, but he didn’t refer specifically to slavery.
Winfield reported from Middletown, Connecticut.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Pope Leo XIV speaks during the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV listens to Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, right, during the presentation of Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV, left, attends the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV, left, arrives with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin for the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, right, talks to theologian Leocadie Lushombo during the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV holds the pastoral staff as he celebrates the Pentecost Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
