“Lay Down Your Weapons!” — Pope Leo XIV Decries War in First Easter Address

Leo XIV’s Urbi et Orbi capped a Holy Week in which the Catholic Church challenged the Trump-Vance White House’s Iran War at every turn — from Palm Sunday through Easter morning.

Thank you for reading! Letters from Leo is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

On Easter Sunday morning, Pope Leo XIV stood before more than fifty thousand faithful in St. Peter’s Square and proclaimed the resurrection as an act of entirely nonviolent love.

He then walked to the central loggia of the basilica and delivered his first Easter Urbi et Orbi — the ancient blessing “to the city and to the world” — with a demand aimed at the leaders waging war across the globe: “Let those who have weapons lay them down.”

The Easter Sunday homily centered on a hope that the pope described as immune to destruction.

“Through the cracks of resurrection that open up in the darkness, he entrusts our hearts to the hope that sustains us,” Pope Leo told the crowd as the square glowed with sixty-five thousand tulips and daffodils shipped from the Netherlands for the occasion.

“The power of death is not the final destiny of our lives.” The risen Christ, he preached, is proof that “a new life, stronger than death, is now dawning for humanity.” He called on every Catholic to carry that news into the streets of the world, running like Mary Magdalene to announce it.

The Urbi et Orbi carried a different register.

Pope Leo named no specific wars — a departure from recent papal tradition — but the targets of his message were unmistakable.

He condemned what he called the “globalization of indifference” toward the killing of tens of thousands, borrowing the phrase directly from Pope Francis and quoting his predecessor’s own words: “What a great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day in the many conflicts raging in different parts of the world.”

Pope Francis spoke those words from the same loggia one year ago, in what became his final public address before his death. Pope Leo chose Easter morning to invoke them — standing in the exact spot where Francis uttered them — claiming continuity with the man who shaped this pontificate’s moral compass.

The timing carries weight far beyond the Vatican. On Tuesday, Pope Leo made a rare direct appeal to President Trump to end the war in Iran before Easter. The White House rejected the appeal.

The pope condemned the “imperialist occupation of the world” in his Holy Thursday homilies. By Good Friday, the Military Archbishop of the United States, Timothy Broglio, declared the Iran war unjust on national television, telling Face the Nation the conflict is “not sponsored by the Lord.”

This Easter message arrived as the capstone of a Holy Week in which the Catholic Church challenged the Trump-Vance administration’s foreign policy at every turn — from Palm Sunday through the Urbi et Orbi.

Pope Leo’s Easter theology rejects the assumption that peace comes through strength. He described Christ’s victory over death as “entirely nonviolent” — achieved through “trusting abandonment to the Father’s will” rather than through force. He compared that power to a grain of wheat growing through the earth and to a wounded heart choosing compassion over revenge.

“This is the true strength that brings peace to humanity,” the pope said.

He then invited the entire world to join a prayer vigil for peace in St. Peter’s Square on April 11, calling on the faithful to “abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power.”

That call lands differently in the United States than anywhere else on earth. An American pope is asking American Catholics to reckon with the fact that their government is prosecuting a war that the Church’s own military archbishop has declared unjust.

The language of nonviolence and dialogue — “not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them” — reads as a direct rebuke of the administration’s posture toward Iran, toward immigrants, and toward the Church itself.

The White House spent Holy Week criticizing Catholic bishops who challenged its policies. Pope Leo spent Easter Sunday preaching that the risen Christ defeats the powers of death without violence, and that everyone who follows him must do the same.

At his Easter Vigil the night before, Pope Leo preached that “even in our day there is no shortage of tombs to be opened” — and that the stones sealing them include “mistrust, fear, selfishness, resentment.”

The Easter Sunday message extended that image to the global stage, asking whether the world’s leaders have the courage to roll away the stones they have placed before peace.

The pope closed his Urbi et Orbi by offering Easter greetings in ten languages, including a simple “Happy Easter” in English — the native language of the first American pope, spoken from the balcony where his predecessor uttered his last public words one year ago.

Francis stood on that loggia and warned the world about its thirst for death. On Sunday, Leo stood in the same place and proclaimed that death has been defeated — and that the only power strong enough to prove it is love.

At Letters from Leo, we stand with Pope Leo XIV and with every person who refuses to grow indifferent to the suffering around them.

Easter proclaims that death does not have the final word — and in a season when governments are choosing war and the world is growing numb to the killing, that proclamation is an act of resistance.

The hope the pope preached from St. Peter’s Square this morning is the same hope that sustains this community: that love, not violence, is the force that transforms the world.

This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for that hope.

They are searching for a faith that does not flinch before injustice or bow to the idols of fear and power — and right now, as an American pope calls on the leaders of the world to lay down their weapons, that search has never felt more urgent.

If you believe this movement matters — Catholics and people of goodwill standing for human dignity against the globalization of indifference — I am asking you to join us.

If you’d like to invest in our mission, here are three ways you can help this Easter season:

• Subscribe as a paid member to receive exclusive posts about the life and formation of Pope Leo and help sustain this newsletter.

• Donate with a one-time gift to fuel this project’s mission.

• Share this post (and Letters from Leo) with a friend who might enjoy it.

Thanks to your support, Letters from Leo can continue covering Pope Leo’s papacy with the depth and urgency it demands. Paid subscribers get access to exclusive series, including Pope Leo’s Life & Formation, The Epstein-Bannon Investigation, and the best of our full archive.

Whether you give $0, $1, or $1,000, your presence here matters — no matter your faith or your politics.

Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.