Catholic Church England and Wales / Flickr
VATICAN CITY // Addressing ambassadors to the Holy See May 16, Pope Leo XIV outlined three pillars of the Catholic Church’s missionary work and of the goals of the Vatican’s diplomacy: peace, justice, and truth.
He requested that the diplomats and the Holy See frequently recall those words in their dialogue.
“In its diplomatic activity,” he said, “the Holy See is inspired by a pastoral outreach that leads it not to seek privileges but to strengthen its evangelical mission at the service of humanity.”
Peace does not simply mean the absence of violence and conflict, but “is first and foremost a gift,” Pope Leo said.
“It is the first gift of Christ: ‘My peace I give to you’. Yet it is an active and demanding gift,” he said. “It engages and challenges each of us, regardless of our cultural background or religious affiliation, demanding first of all that we work on ourselves.”
Peace enters the heart after pride and vindictiveness are removed, he said, and when people choose their words carefully.
“For words too, not only weapons, can wound and even kill,” he said.
As such, dialogue between religions can be fundamental to advancing peace.
“This naturally requires full respect for religious freedom in every country, since religious experience is an essential dimension of the human person,” he said. “Without it, it is difficult, if not impossible, to bring about the purification of the heart necessary for building peaceful relationships.”
When expanding on the pillar of justice, Pope Leo reiterated Church teaching that the family is founded on marriage and that all persons — from the unborn to the elderly — have dignity.
“It is the responsibility of government leaders to work to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies,” the Pope said. “This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman, ‘a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society.’”
“In addition, 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,” he continued. “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: it is the dignity of a creature willed and loved by God.”
Pope Leo noted that Pope Leo XIII penned the justice-focused encyclical Rerum Novarum, which inspired his papal name selection. In light of this, the Holy See cannot back down from speaking out against injustices that cause terrible working conditions and broken societies, he said: “Every effort should be made to overcome the global inequalities — between opulence and destitution — that are carving deep divides between continents, countries and even within individual societies.”
Finally, peaceful relationships can only be built on truth, he said. It is hard to foster authentic relations with ambiguous words and when “the virtual world, with its altered perception of reality, takes over unchecked.”
Pope Leo told the ambassadors that the Catholic Church will not turn from saying what is true, and when necessary will resort “to blunt language” that might create misunderstanding at first. He added that charity is also an essential part of proclaiming the truth.
“Furthermore, from the Christian perspective, truth is not the affirmation of abstract and disembodied principles, but an encounter with the person of Christ himself, alive in the midst of the community of believers,” he said. “Truth, then, 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.”
Such difficulties demand the involvement of all persons, he said.
In his conclusion, Pope Leo noted that his papacy began during the Jubilee Year of Hope, which offers a special opportunity for leaving conflicts behind and working together to “build a world in which everyone can lead an authentically human life in truth, justice and peace.”
“It is my hope,” he added, “that this will be the case everywhere, starting with those places that suffer most grievously, like Ukraine and the Holy Land.”
At the beginning of the address, Pope Leo had also thanked the diplomatic corps for the congratulatory messages for his election and the condolences on the passing of Pope Francis, noting that some were from countries that do not have diplomatic relations with the Holy See. He described the messages from these particular countries as “a significant sign of esteem that indicates a strengthening of mutual relations.”
“In our dialogue, I would like us always to preserve the sense of being a family,” he added. “Indeed, the diplomatic community represents the entire family of peoples, a family that shares the joys and sorrows of life and the human and spiritual values that give it meaning and direction. Papal diplomacy is an expression of the very catholicity of the Church.”The full text of the address is available here.
