the heartfelt cry of Pope Leo XIV for World Peace Day

From the first moments of taking office, Pope Leo XIV had set the tone: his pontificate would be a call for peace, a “disarming and disarming peace”. It is in fact this very expression that he chose to use as the title of his message for World Peace Day.

This text is both a promise – “peace exists, it wants to dwell in us” – and an invitation to believe in this promise, even though today there are many people whose hearts, although “disposed to peace”, are “overwhelmed by a great feeling of helplessness (…) in the face of the increasingly uncertain course of events”.

Leo XIV is completely realistic about the geopolitical situation. “During the year 2024, global military spending increased (…), confirming the uninterrupted trend for ten years”, while a “purely armed concept of defense and security” is being built. “We end up no longer considering it scandalous that one can deny (peace) and even go to war to achieve peace,” he denounces.

“An unprecedented destructive spiral”

Full of “the irrationality of a relationship between peoples, based not on law, on justice or on trust, but on fear and the domination of force”, the world is drawn into a “planetary destabilization which becomes more dramatic and unpredictable every day”.

For the first North American pope, this trend is further reinforced by the “process of disempowerment of political and military leaders” enabled by the delegation of war to machines. “This is an unprecedented destructive spiral,” worries the pontiff.

Faced with this distressing observation, Leo XIV calls for a burst of hope. “Even though it is hindered inside and outside of us, like a little flame threatened by the storm,” peace “has the gentle power to enlighten and expand the intelligence, it resists violence and overcomes it.” And this hope can be even more confident that for the Pope, peace has “the breath of the eternal”.

Denounce violence committed in the name of God

For this, Christians have a very special responsibility, they who have faith in Jesus Christ to “recognize (the) good as victorious and choose it again and again”. They must thus “bear prophetic witness together”, he asks.

This request goes beyond Christians: while it is “increasingly common in the contemporary panorama to bring words of faith into political combat, to bless nationalism and to religiously justify violence and armed struggle”, religious traditions “must actively refute, above all through their lives, these forms of blasphemy which obscure the Holy Name of God”.

This path to peace exists, Leo XIV further assures, because “goodness is disarming”. “We must encourage and support any spiritual, cultural and political initiative that keeps hope alive,” therefore pleads the sovereign pontiff.