LEO PP. XIV
“Peace be with you” was the Risen Jesus’ first greeting to his apostles (Jn 20:19). This was also the first gift the risen Christ offered to his friends and to the whole world: peace. That gift, however, did not come “cheap”: the glorious body of the Master of Nazareth showed the wounds of the Passion. He experienced hatred, violence, the crucifige of the world. Disarmed and disarming, Jesus Christ endured injustice, and he rose. The Gospel proclamation inserted and inserts itself in history. Today as it did 2,000 years ago.
Peace is the great desire that stirs many hearts, but it is also often threatened, trampled upon and derided. Today, a good 103 States are involved in some way, in a war on Earth. Weapons boom and kill in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Sudan, in Myanmar, in Yemen, in Congo and in many other situations. In his time, my beloved predecessor Pope Francis coined the expression, “third world war fought piecemeal”, to describe a situation of widespread conflict, without precedent since the end of the Second World War. Looking through my addresses on this topic, now compiled in this anthology, I would like to underline some aspects that are close to my heart.
Above all, peace is a responsibility. If our first instinct when we encounter a problem, experience tension or are insulted is to judge others, accuse and even condemn them, then, inevitably, first indifference and then hatred will grow around us. There is a way of looking at reality that destroys and does not build. Peace instead, begins with me. It begins with us. Saint Augustine said, “‘The times are troubled, the times are hard, the times are wretched.’ Live good lives, and you will change the times by living good lives; you will change the times, and then you’ll have nothing to grumble about”. We cannot ask the powerful people in the world for peace if we do not begin to live it out ourselves, starting with our daily relationships: in our families, in our homes, in our cities, in the workplace. Peace is built with small daily gestures: the gift of a smile, an injury pardoned, a kind word.
Furthermore, peace is built with truth. Even those who make war claim to act “in the name” of peace. No one has the audacity to declare that they want war for the sake of war: even the powerful of the Earth know that every person aspires to justice and wishes to live in peace. Especially after the terrible consequences of the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the recourse to war is ever more an “adventure with no return”, as Saint John Paul II stressed. I have repeated more than once the fervent appeal that Saint Paul VI made to the United Nations Assembly. What unites men, my venerable predecessor noted, is a pact sealed “with an oath that ought to change the future history of the world: never again war, never again war! It is peace, peace, that has to guide the destiny of the nations of all mankind”! Above all in the atomic era, the affirmation of the truth must push through: it is not atomic weapons that generate peace, but disarmament. This truth, which seemed clear in past decades when we witnessed a nuclear de-escalation, has been obscured by a race to armament that today frightens and terrifies. As singer-songwriter and poet Bob Dylan wrote, figuratively addressing the atomic bomb, in one of his poetic compositions: “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned an’ man-handled”. Today, the Church humbly brings a question to everyone’s attention: Must the human species continue to inhabit the Earth? The combination of the cyber domain and global rearmament impels one to seriously ask this question.
Peace seeks witnesses. This anthology points this out to us with the strength of many faces. The figures mentioned, among them Blessed Floribert Bwana Chui, and Servants of God Giorgio La Pira and Dorothy Day, are emblematic of many men and women who fostered peace in first person, by overcoming the temptation of corruption, by helping the poor, by supporting diplomacy. Alongside renowned men and women, peace is embodied by “little-known protagonists” who followed their own conscience.
History has already seen us come close to nuclear catastrophe. Records recount that the decision of one man, Soviet official Stanislav Petrov, contributed to avoiding a possible global atomic war. It was 26 September 1983. The radars of the bunker near Moscow, where Petrov was on duty, signalled the launch of multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles from the United States toward the Soviet Union. However, it was an error of the Soviet satellite detection system. Petrov disobeyed orders and chose not to signal the presumed attack. It was a decision that was made with the conscience of someone who knew that that simple gesture could have caused millions of deaths. A world in which machines, albeit sophisticated and faster than us, are the ones to decide to bomb defenceless people would be truly frightening. The conscience of a single person can be worth the entire world.
Lastly, peace requires hope. The Church will continue to preach charity towards all men and women. If there is one thing the world is seeking today, I believe it to be a message of peace for the future. Let us look to the future with hope, having found Jesus’ message as the only source. Because this is the essence of Christ’s teaching: charity, love and giving one’s life for others defeat death, isolation, violence: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10).
To those who risk falling into the temptation to despair before so many ongoing wars in the world, I direct the invitation that Pope Pius XI extended to the whole Church: “Let us thank God that He makes us live among the present problems. It is no longer permitted to anyone to be mediocre”. May God guide us on paths of non-violence. May believers and people of good will never stop working as builders of peace. May every person make peace his or her life’s cause.
From the Vatican, 19 June 2026
Cf. Global Peace Index 2026, Sydney 2026.
Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermons, 311, 8.8.
Saint John Paul II, Prayer for Peace, 2 February 1991.
Saint Paul VI, Address to the United Nations Organization, 4 October 1965.
Bob Dylan, Go Away You Bomb, 1963. – Vatican News
