VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV used his annual foreign policy address to criticize how countries are using force to assert dominion, saying it is “completely undermining” peace and the post-World War II international legal order. Speaking Friday to ambassadors from around the world accredited to the Holy See, the pope said, “War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading.”
In his remarks, which he delivered in English for much of the speech in a break from the Vatican’s traditional diplomatic protocol of Italian and French, Leo XIV did not name specific countries or governments that he said have resorted to force. The address came amid a wider conflict backdrop that included the recent U.S. military operation in Venezuela to remove Nicolás Maduro from power, Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, and other conflicts.
The occasion was the pope’s annual audience with the Vatican diplomatic corps, a yearly foreign policy address intended to be a roundup of international issues. AP reported that in his first such encounter, history’s first U.S.-born pope delivered more than a traditional global hotspots update, touching on threats to religious freedom and the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion and surrogacy while also warning about the state of multilateral diplomacy.
Leo XIV said a diplomacy based on force is replacing a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties. “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies,” he said. He added that the principle established after World War II—prohibiting nations from using force to violate the borders of others—has been “completely undermined.”
The pope also warned that “peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one’s own dominion,” saying it “gravely threatens the rule of law, which is the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence.” He said such dynamics threaten the legal framework for peaceful civil coexistence.
On Venezuela, the pope explicitly called for a peaceful political solution that keeps in mind “the common good of the peoples and not the defense of partisan interests.” He spoke as the U.S. seized Maduro in what AP described as a surprise nighttime raid, and as the Trump administration seeks to control Venezuela’s oil resources and its government, according to the AP account.
AP reported that the U.S. government has insisted Maduro’s capture was legal. It said drug cartels operating from Venezuela amounted to unlawful combatants and that the U.S. is now in an “armed conflict” with them. The AP report said analysts and some world leaders condemned the Venezuela mission, warning that ousting Maduro could pave the way for more military interventions and further erosion of the global legal order.
On Ukraine, Leo XIV repeated his appeal for an immediate ceasefire and urged the international community “not to waver in its commitment to pursuing just and lasting solutions that will protect the most vulnerable and restore hope to the afflicted peoples.” On Gaza, he repeated the Holy See’s call for a two-state solution and insisted that Palestinians have the right to live in Gaza and the West Bank “in their own land.”
Leo XIV also addressed religious persecution and discrimination, saying the persecution of Christians around the world was “one of the most widespread human rights crises today,” affecting one in seven Christians globally. He cited religiously motivated violence in Bangladesh, Nigeria, the Sahel, Mozambique and Syria, and said religious discrimination was also present in Europe and the Americas.
In that context, the pope said Christians “are sometimes restricted in their ability to proclaim the truths of the Gospel for political or ideological reasons,” especially when they defend what he described as the dignity of the weakest, including “the unborn, refugees and migrants,” or promote the family.
The pope repeated the Church’s opposition to abortion and euthanasia and expressed “deep concern” about projects to provide cross-border access to mothers seeking abortion. He also described surrogacy as “a threat to life and dignity,” saying, “By transforming gestation into a negotiable service, this violates the dignity both of the child, who is reduced to a product, and of the mother, exploiting her body and the generative process, and distorting the original relational calling of the family.”