After a Holy Week wherein he ramped up his beforehand restrained antiwar rhetoric, Pope Leo XIV shouldn’t be taking his foot off the fuel, issuing an emphatic attraction for world leaders to desert the pursuit of energy and work for peace.
“Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!” the pope stated at a prayer vigil for peace in St. Peter’s Basilica April 11. “True strength is shown in serving life.”
Leo introduced the unusual and unprompted prayer vigil in his Easter Sunday tackle April 5, giving the pontiff one other but event to make the case for world peace following his Holy Week celebrations wherein the theme of peace featured prominently.
In his speech, delivered after praying the rosary, Leo instantly addressed world leaders on behalf of the “millions and billions of men and women, young and old, who today choose to believe in peace, caring for the wounds and repairing the damage left behind by the madness of war.”
“To them we cry out: Stop! It is time for peace! Sit at the table of dialogue and mediation, not at the table where rearmament is planned and deadly actions are decided!” he stated.
Though not referencing any particular battle by title, the pope invoked the legacy of St. John Paul II, recalling his predecessor’s efforts to avert the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Then, the Polish pope made quite a few appeals to forestall the battle’s outbreak and despatched Cardinal Pio Laghi, former Vatican ambassador to the United States, to speak President George W. Bush out of the invasion and ship the president a letter from the pope.
Laghi later described the Iraq battle as “illegal and unjust.” Discussing the Iran battle on April 7, Leo instructed reporters that many individuals have known as the battle in Iran “unjust,” a time period rooted in Catholic simply battle instructing for conflicts that fail to satisfy ethical standards.
The pope’s speech at the prayer vigil additionally got here after a January meeting was revealed to have taken place between Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s most up-to-date ambassador to the United States, and Pentagon officers. The Free Press, which initially reported the assembly, described the assembly as an effort by Pentagon officers to insist that the United States can exert its navy would possibly nevertheless it sees match and that the Catholic Church “had better take its side.”
The Department of Defense and U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Brian Burch each disputed that characterization of the assembly, with Burch quoting Pierre to explain the reporting across the assembly as “fabrications.”
At the pope’s prayer service, attended by 36 cardinals and patriarchs and 50 bishops, the pope stated that prayer shouldn’t be “an anesthetic to numb the pain provoked by so much injustice,” however slightly in prayer human ideas, phrases and deeds “break the demonic cycle of evil and are placed at the service of the Kingdom of God.”
“A Kingdom in which there is no sword, no drone, no vengeance, no trivialization of evil, no unjust profit, but only dignity, understanding and forgiveness,” the pope stated.
Prayer, he continued, is “a bulwark against that delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive,” significantly at a time when “the balance within the human family has been severely destabilized.”
In his remarks Leo echoed his Palm Sunday homily wherein he stated that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war,” presenting a hanging distinction to the non secular rhetoric of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth who has repeatedly invoked Jesus’ title in public prayers for the United States’ victory within the battle in Iran.
“Even the holy name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death,” Leo stated at the vigil. “Those who pray are aware of their own limitations; they do not kill or threaten with death.”
“Instead, death enslaves those who have turned their backs on the living God, turning themselves and their own power into a mute, blind and deaf idol, to which they sacrifice every value, demanding that the whole world bend its knee,” he stated.
Beyond the basilica, pilgrims additionally gathered outdoors within the breezy Roman afternoon to hitch within the vigil from St. Peter’s Square; Leo stopped within the sq. to greet them and thank them for their participation.
“We want to say to the whole world that it is possible to build peace, a new peace,” the pope instructed them earlier than coming into the basilica. “That it is possible to live together, all people, of all religions, of all races, that we want to be disciples of Jesus Christ united as brothers and sisters, all united in a world of peace.”
