“Let those who have weapons lay them down!”, the Pope urged on Easter Sunday in his traditional Urbi et Orbi (‘To the City and the World’) message.
Speaking to the tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered in St Peter’s Square, Pope Leo urged “those who have the power to unleash wars” to choose peace.
This should not be a peace “imposed by force”, he stressed, but one achieved through dialogue – “not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them”.
Pope Leo warned that the world is “growing accustomed to violence”.
We are “becoming indifferent”, he said, not only to the deaths of thousands of people, but to the “hatred and division” war causes, as well as its “economic and social consequences”.
Borrowing a phrase from the late Pope Francis, Pope Leo warned of the “ever-increasing ‘globalisation of indifference’”.
“We cannot continue to be indifferent!” , he urged. “We cannot resign ourselves to evil!”.
For this reason, he said, he would be leading a prayer vigil for peace next Saturday, April 11th, in St Peter’s Basilica.