POPE Leo XIV has urged all governments to work for “truth, justice, and peace”, while also reaffirming the Roman Catholic Church’s traditional teaching on family relationships and human dignity.
“My own life experience, which has spanned North America, South America, and Europe, has been marked by an aspiration to transcend borders in order to encounter different peoples and cultures,” Pope Leo said on Friday morning.
“In this time of epochal change, the Holy See cannot fail to make its voice heard in the face of the many imbalances and injustices that lead, not least, to unworthy working conditions and increasingly fragmented and conflict-ridden societies. Every effort should be made to overcome the global inequalities — between opulence and destitution — that are carving deep divides.”
The Pope was addressing ambassadors and diplomats accredited to the Vatican, a week after being chosen to succeed the late Pope Francis.
The diplomatic community, he said, could be compared with a family, sharing “the joys and sorrows of life”, and that he hoped to “build new bridges” by extending the outreach of Vatican diplomacy, and appealing to consciences to be “ever attentive to the cry of the poor, the needy, and marginalised, as well as to contemporary challenges, ranging from protection of creation to artificial intelligence. . .
“My own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate — all of us, in the course of our lives, can find ourselves healthy or sick, employed or unemployed, living in our native land or in a foreign country, yet our dignity always remains unchanged,” he said.
He was Bishop of Chiclayo, in Peru, before being appointed Prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Bishops, and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America in 2023.
He continued: “It is the responsibility of government leaders to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies. This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman. . . No one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike.”
The Vatican enjoys full diplomatic relations with all but a dozen of the world’s 193 countries, and participates in 40 international organisations, including the United Nations and its agencies.
The new Pope said that he had received messages after his election from some states without official ties to the Holy See, which include China and North Korea, and that he hoped to continue visiting countries, as previously when Prior-General of the Augustinian Order.
Peace, he said, was often considered negatively, as merely indicating “a pause between one dispute and another”, when tension and opposition were seen as an ever-present “part of human nature”.
It should be viewed instead, he told diplomats, as an “active and demanding gift”, which required “first of all that we work on ourselves”, and also presupposed “a resolve to halt the production of instruments of destruction and death. . .
“Peace is built in the heart and from the heart, by eliminating pride and vindictiveness and carefully choosing our words; for words too, not only weapons, can wound and even kill.
“This effort, in which all of us are called to take part, can begin to eliminate the root causes of all conflicts and every destructive urge for conquest. It demands a genuine willingness to engage in dialogue, inspired by the desire to communicate rather than clash. As a result, there is a need to give new life to multilateral diplomacy, and to those international institutions conceived and designed primarily to remedy eventual disputes.”
He said that “full respect for religious freedom” was necessary everywhere to enable religious communities to foster dialogue and seek “the purification of heart necessary for building peaceful relationships”.
He added that he had named himself after Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903), in recognition of his pioneering social teaching, and said that the Church would always speak “truth about humanity and the world”, resorting “whenever necessary to blunt language that may initially create misunderstanding”.
He said: “Where words take on ambiguous and ambivalent connotations, and the virtual world, with its altered perception of reality, takes over unchecked, it is difficult to build authentic relationships, since the objective and real premises of communication are lacking.
“Truth does not create division, but rather enables us to confront all the more resolutely the challenges of our time, such as migration, the ethical use of artificial intelligence, and the protection of our beloved planet Earth. These are challenges that require commitment and co-operation on the part of all, since no one can think of facing them alone.”
The Vatican has published a 100-page service order for the former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost’s inauguration on Sunday as head of the Roman Catholic Church and the 267th successor of St Peter, at a Vatican mass which will be attended by world leaders including the US Vice-President J. D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the Duke of Edinburgh, who will represent the King.
In his address on Friday, Pope Leo XIV said that he hoped his Church’s current Jubilee Year would bring “an opportunity to leave conflicts behind and embark on a new path”, enabling everyone to work together for “an authentically human life in truth, justice, and peace, beginning with those places that suffer most grievously, like Ukraine and the Holy Land”.
Addressing leaders of Eastern Churches on Wednesday, he said that the Holy See was “always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face”, and urged world leaders to “meet, talk, and negotiate”.
“War is never inevitable — weapons can and must be silenced, for they do not resolve problems but only increase them”, the Pope said.
“Those who make history are the peacemakers, not those who sow seeds of suffering. . . Let us reject the Manichaean notions so typical of that mindset of violence that divides the world into those who are good and those who are evil.”
