Vatican City, 18 June, 2025 / 1:25 pm (ACI Africa).
Pope Leo XIV on June 18 renewed his strong call for peace, urging people to not “get used to war.”
Addressing pilgrims at the end of Wednesday’s general audience, the pontiff lamented that “the Church is brokenhearted at the cry of pain rising from places devastated by war.”
In particular, he focused on the conflicts in Ukraine, Iran, Israel, and Gaza. “We must not get used to war!” he exclaimed from St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.
In this context, he emphasized that “the temptation to have recourse to powerful and sophisticated weapons needs to be rejected.”
He then cited the Second Vatican Council noting that in modern warfare, “every kind of weapon produced by modern science is used in war, the savagery of war threatens to lead the combatants to barbarities far surpassing those of former ages.”
