Pope Leo: ‘Let those who have weapons lay them down!’
Pope Leo XIV used his first Easter speech Sunday to deliver a resounding call for peace in times of renewed war, declaring, “Let those who have weapons lay them down!”
“Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!” Leo said. “Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them! We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent. Indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people.”
The Chicago-born leader of 1.4 billion Catholics has amped up his vocal campaign to denounce violence in the Middle East while also seeming to push back against efforts by the Trump administration and its allies to harness religion and God in their framing of politics and war.
This Easter is seen as especially portentous for the Vatican and the world’s largest Christian faith. Pope Francis died a day after greeting the crowds in St. Peter’s Square on Easter last year, and a new American pope is now navigating a global landscape upended by a White House that is unleashing military might overseas while embracing a nativist agenda at home — in words and deeds often seen by the Vatican as challenging the tenets of Catholicism.
Speaking from a balcony above the square on Sunday to a throng of faithful in the Urbi et Orbi blessing — a key papal speech to the city of Rome and the world — Leo repeated words from Francis’s final Easter speech.
“What a great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day in the many conflicts raging in different parts of the world.” he lamented.
Invocations of God by the Trump administration to defend the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran have alarmed the Vatican, and Leo has grown blunter in pushing back against suggestions that divine providence supports the use of force or violence, as when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked God to give U.S. troops attacking Iran “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” [Continue reading…]