PUBLISHED Oct 27, 2026, 6:15 PM ET
Authored by Levi C. Webb
Pope Leo XIV used a video message marking the Assisi peace gathering’s 40th anniversary to reject religious justifications for war and urge mediation.
Forty years after religious leaders gathered in Assisi, Pope Leo XIV renewed their peace appeal, challenging attempts to give warfare divine authority amid international conflict.
Pope Leo XIV rejected religious justifications for warfare in an October 27 video message to an international peace gathering in Assisi, Italy, urging believers to support mediation and dialogue. “There is no such thing as a holy war: only peace is holy,” he said, according to ANSA’s report on the address. His intervention marked the 40th anniversary of the interfaith peace meeting convened by Pope John Paul II in 1986. The immediate significance was a clear public refusal to let religious commitment serve as an automatic endorsement of military action.
Leo addressed the meeting remotely after canceling his planned attendance on medical advice. El País reported on October 23 that doctors had advised against the helicopter flight while he recovered from October 13 surgery to remove a lung tumor, and that the Vatican had announced a message would replace his visit. The practical adjustment preserved his contribution while accommodating his recovery. It also means earlier announcements describing an appearance in Assisi should be read as plans that were subsequently changed, rather than accounts of what happened.
The anniversary explains why Assisi was the setting for this appeal. Vatican News’s October 6 preview traced the gathering to October 27, 1986, when John Paul brought representatives of different religions together to pray for peace, and described how the Community of Sant’Egidio subsequently carried that initiative into recurring international meetings. Organizers scheduled this year’s event for October 25–27 under a theme of unarmed and disarming peace. That history remains relevant because Leo was addressing an established forum for religious cooperation, with an institutional memory extending well beyond the current conflicts.
The organizers’ advance program also shows the intended reach of the gathering: Vatican News reported plans for 384 representatives from 53 countries and 24 thematic forums. Subjects included migration, disarmament, economics, children and young people, and relations across the Mediterranean. Those were announced program figures, rather than independently confirmed final attendance totals, but they demonstrate that the meeting was designed to connect prayer with public questions. The editorial implication is concrete: a credible peace appeal must address the conditions affecting communities as well as the language used by their leaders.
Leo’s latest statement also continues a position he expressed before this anniversary. In an October 28, 2025 address at Rome’s Colosseum, reproduced by L’Osservatore Romano, he linked prayer to reconciliation, warned against religious slogans directed against other people, and endorsed Pope Francis’s warning about religion becoming an instrument of nationalism and related political movements. That older text matters because it establishes continuity rather than a sudden change prompted by one event. Read together, the addresses frame religious leadership as carrying responsibility for how faith is used publicly, including when political actors seek its authority.
The strongest supported reading of the new message is therefore a challenge to the religious legitimation of war and an appeal for dialogue. ANSA reported that Leo explicitly connected the Assisi tradition with rejecting religious justifications and embracing mediation, but its account supplies no negotiated settlement or mechanism for enforcing that appeal. This exposes the practical tension: a shared moral declaration can establish common ground while leaving governments and combatants responsible for decisions about fighting, negotiations and civilian protection. Whether participants can turn that common ground into sustained cooperation remains uncertain; the anniversary and the papal message alone do not demonstrate that outcome.
Assisi’s continuing relevance lies in the responsibility Leo assigns to believers and their leaders: to resist making religion a warrant for violence and to sustain the patient work of reconciliation.
• • • • •
Reporting and writing by Levi C. Webb. AI tools were used selectively to assist with research and editorial support.
© 2026 Fat Wagner LLC. All rights reserved.
Sources
- Pope says stop preparing for more wars, only peace is holy — ANSA
- El Papa León en Asís, 40 años después del encuentro querido por Wojtyła — Vatican News
- El Papa anula una visita a Asís porque los médicos le desaconsejan viajar en helicóptero tras su operación — El País
- Papal Texts — L’Osservatore Romano