Pope Francis supports use of force to stop Islamic extremists from attacking religious minorities in Iraq

Pope Francis on Monday blessed the use of force to stop the vicious Islamic radicals overrunning Iraq, but he said any intervention first must be backed by the international community.

His comments — in an extraordinary news conference aboard the papal plane — came as President Obama announced that Kurdish and Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes, had recaptured the giant Mosul Dam from the extremists.

The fighters with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, have swept across northern Iraq since June, driving 1.5 million Christians and other Iraqi minorities from their homes.

The retreat of the extremists from the dam represented their first major defeat in Iraq.

In a question-and-answer session with reporters returning with him from a five-day trip to South Korea, Francis was asked if he supported the U.S. air strikes authorized by Obama against ISIS.

“In these cases, where there is an unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor,” Francis said.

“I underscore the verb ‘stop.’ I’m not saying ‘bomb’ or ‘make war,’ just ‘stop.’ And the means that can be used to stop them must be evaluated.”

However, the Pope went on to say that such intervention should not be decided unilaterally, by one country.

Too many times, Francis said, countries have used the “excuse of stopping the unjust aggressor” to launch a “true war of conquest.”

He added, “One single nation cannot judge how you stop this, how you stop an unjust aggressor.”

Still, even with the Pope’s qualifications, his comments represented a shift in the Vatican’s steadfast opposition to military force in recent years.

Last year, for example, Francis staged a global prayer and fast for peace when Obama threatened U.S. air strikes to stop the use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war.

The Vatican’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, signaled the evolving Vatican position when he said last week, “Maybe military action is necessary at this moment.”

Christian communities in northern Iraq, which date back 2,000 years, have been evacuated as ISIS fighters took control of their towns and presented residents with a grim choice: Convert to Islam or pay a tax to avoid death. Many chose to flee.

Francis said he was weighing whether to visit northern Iraq to show solidarity with the persecuted Christians there.

The retaking of the Mosul dam culminated a three-day offensive by Iraqi special forces and Kurdish troops backed by U.S. warplanes and armed drones.

Taking what amounted to a victory lap, Obama said the return of the dam to safe hands was evidence that his new strategy in Iraq — applying selective use of U.S. airpower but committing no U.S. boots on the ground — was working.

“Iraqi and Kurdish forces took the lead on the ground, and performed with courage and determination,” Obama said.

“This operation demonstrates that Iraqi and Kurdish forces are capable of working together and taking the fight” to the ISIS fighters.

The President, who interrupted his Martha’s Vineyard vacation to return to Washington, said if “that dam was breached, it could have proven catastrophic,” with floods threatening thousands of civilians and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

“We’ve got a national security interest in making sure our people are protected and in making sure that a savage group that seems willing to slaughter people for no rhyme or reason other than they have not kowtowed — that a group like that is contained, because ultimately it can pose a threat to us,” Obama said.