Pope Leo’s First Easter Message Urges Leaders to Choose Peace

Pope Leo XIV used his first Easter Sunday as pontiff to warn that the world is growing “accustomed to violence,” as NBC News quoted him, and to urge those with the power to start wars to choose peace through dialogue instead of force. He spoke from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to an estimated 50,000 people in the square, according to NBC News and the Associated Press.

The American-born pope asked people holding weapons to put them down and said peace should not be imposed by force, NBC News, DW and the Associated Press reported. NBC News said he quoted his predecessor Pope Francis’s remark of a year earlier about a “great thirst for death.”

Leo did not name any conflict, the Associated Press reported, and DW said he spoke without naming individual leaders. EWTN News described a departure from the traditional Easter survey of the world’s flashpoints in the Urbi et Orbi blessing, “to the city and the world.” The backdrop was plain: the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is in its second month, the AP reported.

He has been more pointed elsewhere. NBC News reported that on Tuesday he said he hoped President Trump was “looking for an off-ramp” in the Iran war, that the week before he said no one can use Jesus to justify war, and that last month he said Christian political leaders who start wars should go to confession. He did not name Mr. Trump in that last remark, NBC News said. The article contrasted his words with a Pentagon prayer service on Wednesday, led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which asked God to help U.S. forces and used language about “overwhelming violence.” The debate over the war itself was outside the pope’s Easter remarks.

Leo announced a prayer vigil for peace at St. Peter’s Basilica on April 11, according to Vatican News, DW and EWTN News, and DW reported that he gave Easter greetings in 10 languages. The AP, alone among these outlets, added that he restored the Holy Thursday washing of priests’ feet and carried the cross for all 14 stations on Good Friday during Holy Week; that detail is not independently confirmed.

NBC News added that the Vatican declined Mr. Trump’s invitation to join his “Board of Peace” in February and that Leo has no plans to visit the United States this year, focusing instead on trips to Africa and Europe.