by Stephen McKinney and Jennifer Farrar

Pope Leo XIV and Peace

The first public words of Pope Leo XIV were pronounced at his urbi et orbi blessing on 8th May 2025 in the Vatican. He opened his message with ‘Peace be with you all!’  When he delivered his first message for the World Day of Peace, on 1st January 2026, he used very similar words, ‘Peace be with you’, In this message for World Peace Day, Pope Leo reiterated more words from his first urbi et orbi:

…this is the peace of the risen Christ – a peace that is unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering.  It comes from God who loves us all unconditionally.

He identified peace as more than just a goal: ‘it is a presence and a journey’. He points out that global spending on arms is increasing, precipitated by fear of attacks in the current climate of aggression. Pope Leo counters this by calling for dialogue and trust between nations.  He rejects the spurious and dangerous use of religion and religious language to justify violence and armed struggle. He quotes Pope John XXIII who advocated integral disarmament, which ultimately aims for the abolition of arms. Interestingly, Pope Leo included peace in his amendments to the Global Compact on Education of Pope Francis (Congregatio De Institutione Catholica, 2021). The Global Compact was addressed to all of humankind, and Pope Francis outlined seven commitments. These were all deeply rooted in Catholic Social Teaching: to make human persons the centre; to listen to the voices of children and young people; to advance the women; to empower the family; to welcome; to find new ways of understanding economy and politics, and to safeguard our common home.

In Drawing New Maps of Hope (2025), Pope Leo proposed changing the name of the seven commitments to seven paths and added three new priorities. These are (1) the inner life (2) the judicious use of technology and AI and, the one that is of most interest to the theme of this article, (3) peace:

The third regards unarmed and disarming peace: let us educate in non-violent languages, reconciliation, bridges and not walls. “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Mt 5:9) becomes the method and content of learning (Pope Leo XIV, 2025, paragraph 10.3).

Even at this very early stage of his papacy, Pope Leo has strongly opposed violence and war and emphasised peace. In the last few years, two wars have dominated the news throughout the world, the war between Russia and Ukraine and the war in Gaza. Pope Leo drew attention to these wars, and other armed conflicts, in his Address to Members of the Diplomatic Corps Accredited to the Holy See on Friday ninth of January 2026. In the next section we will discuss the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

Professor Stephen McKinney and Dr Jennifer Farrar work in the School of Education, University of Glasgow.

Select references

Auelaish, I., Yousufzai, S.J., Sanchos, M. & Oliver, A. (2025) Enduring Struggles and Protracted War: Hatred as a Multi-Faceted Construct. Journal of Human Psychology, 2(2), 1-19.

Congregatio De Institutione Catholica (2021) Global Compact on Education. Vademecum. https://www.educationglobalcompact.org/resources/Risorse/vademecum-english.pdf

Coward, M. (2009) Urbicide. The Politics of urban destruction. London; Routledge.

Desai, C., Hammad, S., Abu Shaban, A. & Takriti, A. R. (2025) Scholasticide and resilience: The Gaza Genocide and the struggle for Palestinian higher education. Curriculum Inquiry, 1-37.

Pope Leo XIV (2025) Drawing New Maps of Hope. Apostolic Letter. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/apost_letters/documents/20251027-disegnare-nuove-mappe.html

Pope Leo XIV (2026) Message of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV for the LIX World Day of Peace. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/messages/peace/documents/20251208-messaggio-pace.html

UNICEF (2024) Six Grave Violations against children in times of war. https://www.unicef.org/children-under-attack/six-grave-violations-against-children

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Image Credit: Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash