Pope urges US and Iran to return to peace talks

Pope Leo XIV speaks to journalists aboard the papal flight from Malabo to Rome on Thursday (Andrew Medichini/AP)

Pope Leo XIV has urged the United States and Iran to return to talks to end the war and condemned capital punishment, in a wide-ranging press conference en route home from his trip to Africa.

Leo also asserted that countries have the right to control their borders but must not treat migrants worse than “animals”, and lamented that the church’s morality teaching is often reduced to sexual issues.