Iran’s ambassador to the Vatican has urged Pope Leo XIV to speak out against US sanctions that are disrupting ordinary people’s access to medical care, education, family visits and religious pilgrimage, calling on the pontiff to help prevent humanitarian consequences.

In a Thursday letter addressed to the leader of the Catholic Church, Mohammad Hossein Mokhtari appealed to the Pope’s moral and diplomatic authority to defend vulnerable people affected by Washington’s “inhumane” policies.

“When decisions by the delusional US president [Donald Trump] lead to sweeping air restrictions and make people’s travel more difficult, the issue is no longer merely about flight routes or political relations,” Mokhtari wrote.

He stressed that air travel was not a luxury for people who needed to reach hospitals abroad, transport medical supplies, pursue university studies, reunite with relatives or attend to critically ill family members. It was also essential for Muslims and other believers seeking to undertake religious journeys.

“For these people, flying is not a luxury commodity. At times, it is the means of reaching treatment, knowledge, family, faith and hope, and of saving human lives,” he said.

The letter comes as Washington launched a new campaign of economic sanctions against Iran in late August after failing to achieve its objectives in the military war that it co-launched with the Israeli regime against Iran in February. Tehran has slammed the measures as “economic terrorism”.

In September, the US Treasury Department imposed new sanctions on 27 Iranian airlines, threatening sanctions on any airport and company across the world that would provide services to the airlines.

Mokhtari noted that the consequences of such restrictions must be assessed from the perspective of those least able to bear them, rather than through political or economic calculations.

“Behind every number, there is a human being, a family and a life story,” he wrote, urging the Pope to use his influence to make the human cost of government decisions heard beyond national and political boundaries.

Mokhtari called on Pope Leo XIV to take three steps: publicly defend the preservation of humanitarian air routes, use the moral and diplomatic standing of the Holy See to press Washington to assess the human consequences of restrictions, and encourage religious leaders to unite in support of innocent people and oppressed nations.

“Explicitly and firmly urge the child-killing and terrorist US government to prevent the violation of the fundamental rights of patients and their necessary companions, children, the elderly, students, and those facing family emergencies through the unjust and inhumane imposition of sweeping air restrictions,” he wrote.

“A patient must not be driven into a dead end in reaching treatment,” he added. “A child must not be deprived of a final meeting with their parents solely because of the ambitions of a bullying government.”

He called on the pontiff to urge Washington to evaluate the humanitarian effects of its decisions before implementing broad restrictions.

“Every major decision, before it is implemented, deserves to be viewed once through the eyes of the weakest person who will have to bear its consequences,” he said.

The Iranian envoy grounded his appeal in shared religious and humanitarian principles, citing the Gospel of Matthew’s call to care for the sick and welcome strangers, alongside a Qur’anic verse describing the saving of one life as equivalent to saving all humanity.

He said cooperation between Muslims and Christians did not require them to resolve their theological differences, but rather to work together to alleviate human suffering.

“We can differ in belief and be united in compassion. We can disagree in theology and stand together in upholding the sanctity of human life,” he wrote.

Mokhtari called on the Pope and the wider international community to put human dignity above political rivalries.

“Do not close the skies to ordinary people,” he wrote. “For the sky, before it is a field of power, is a path connecting human beings: the path of the sick to treatment, the student to knowledge, the child to family, the believer to worship, and one human being to another.”