Pope Leo: Welcome Strangers — Stop Using God to Justify War

In the Vatican’s last ceremonies of 2025, the new pope prays that Rome embrace its most vulnerable and condemns “armed” strategies cloaked in pious rhetoric.

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Pope Leo XIV brought the year 2025 to a close on Wednesday, Dec. 31, with a striking prayer: that the city of Rome might become a truly welcoming place for foreigners and all fragile people, young and old.

Presiding over a sunset Vespers service in St. Peter’s Basilica, the pope offered thanks for the graces of the Holy Year and directly invoked Rome’s civic leaders. “What can we wish for Rome?” Leo asked aloud.

“That it may be worthy of its little ones — of men and women who have come from afar hoping for a dignified life.”

In the front pews, Rome’s mayor and other dignitaries listened as the pope urged the Eternal City to live up to its legacy of mercy.

This moment unfolded as part of the traditional New Year’s Eve Te Deum service, in which the pontiff leads a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to God for the year’s blessings.

And 2025 had plenty to be thankful for: the Vatican reports that over 3.2 million pilgrims took part in papal liturgies, audiences, and Jubilee events during this Holy Year.

Many of those faithful passed through the Holy Door that Pope Francis opened last Christmas to begin the Jubilee — and Pope Leo, elected in May after Francis’s death, will solemnly close that Door on January 6th, ending the Jubilee of Hope.

Earlier that same day, at his final Wednesday audience of the year, Leo had already set a reflective tone. He invited Catholics worldwide to look back on 2025 with both gratitude and repentance, and to place the coming year in God’s hands.

This “examination of conscience,” as he called it, was the spiritual prelude to the evening’s grand Te Deum. By tying the two events together, Leo signaled that welcoming the outsider and examining our own hearts are inseparable Christian duties.

As he noted, the Te Deum — Latin for “Thee, O God, we praise” — helps believers recognize God’s gifts and renew their hope for the future.

Confronting “Armed” Ideologies and False Religion

If the first part of Leo’s message was a plea for compassion, the second was a fierce challenge to the forces that thwart it.

In his New Year’s Eve homily, the Pope warned that not everyone’s “designs” for the world align with God’s mercy.

He lamented the rise of “strategies aimed at conquering markets, territories and spheres of influence. Armed strategies, cloaked in hypocritical discourse, ideological proclamations, and false religious motives.”

In short, Leo condemned the kind of cynical power-plays that masquerade as noble causes — whether it’s warlords invoking God, politicians exploiting patriotism, or any “weaponized” ideology that tramples the vulnerable.

This was a bold moral indictment delivered in the heart of Christendom, and Leo did not shy away from naming the spiritual antidote. He pointed to Mary, the Mother of God, celebrated on Jan. 1, as the exemplar of humble faith that overturns the mighty.

It’s Mary’s Magnificat vision — the “power of littleness” — that God uses to “scatter the plots of the proud” and “overthrow the mighty,” the pope said, while lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things.

In Leo’s view, history isn’t ultimately shaped by tyrants grasping for power or economies chasing profit; it’s moved by the hopeful witness of ordinary “little ones” cooperating with God’s plan.

By juxtaposing these themes — welcoming the stranger and denouncing violent ideological crusades — Pope Leo XIV closed out his first year as pontiff with a clear moral narrative.

The Gospel, he insists, calls for open doors and open hearts, not walls built out of fear or selfish ambition.

The Jubilee Year has been, in Leo’s words, a “great sign of [God’s] plan of hope for humanity and the world.”

And fittingly, Leo highlighted that Rome itself has a special role in that hopeful plan — not because of imperial glory or worldly power, but because it is sanctified by martyrs and called to be “at the height of its little ones,” a city where the weakest are treasured.

As we enter 2026, Leo XIV’s parting exhortation challenges all of us to make a choice. Will we build societies that welcome or reject the stranger? Will we pursue “peaceful, liberating” designs of mercy, or fall for the “hypocritical” and violent plots of the powerful?

In the pope’s view, this is not a merely political question — it’s a fundamental test of our fidelity to the Gospel.

By praying the Te Deum in thanksgiving, Leo reminded the faithful that God is in charge of history, and hope is never in vain.

By condemning the false idols of ideology and conquest, he reminded the world that true faith never weaponizes love or truth. Instead, authentic Christianity “stands at the service of God’s loving design for humanity” — a design that always favors the vulnerable over the vainglorious.

Pope Leo’s final message of 2025 is therefore both comforting and unsettling. It comforts us with the vision of a more fraternal world where no one is treated as an outsider, and it unsettles us by exposing the lies that stand in the way.

In typical fashion, Leo XIV has ended the year by casting out fear with hope — and urging the Church to do the same, from Rome to the farthest ends of the earth.

To my surprise, the Advent Reflection Series became one of the most widely read and shared parts of Letters from Leo in 2025.

Many of you wrote to tell me that these reflections helped steady your hearts during a difficult year for our nation — one marked by political division, anxiety, and real moral uncertainty.

Because of that response, I’ve decided to make these reflections a permanent part of this work in 2026.

Beginning this week, I’ll publish a weekly Sunday reflection, rooted in the Mass readings of the day, and written to help us think more clearly about what it means to follow Jesus in the middle of today’s political realities — not by retreating from public life, and not by baptizing any party or ideology, but by letting the Gospel form our conscience, our courage, and our compassion.

These reflections will be available to all paid subscribers, as a small but sincere way of saying thank you for making Letters from Leo possible. The first edition is below.

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