By Ken Butigan

 

Vatican News, reporting on Pope Leo XIV’s 2026 World Day of Peace, emphasized how “The Pope reiterates that the Gospel links peace and nonviolence.”  It is not surprising that Vatican News drew this conclusion. Officially released on January 1, the World Day of Peace message deepens and broadens a theme that has made this linkage throughout His Holiness’ young papacy, captured with precision in its title: “Peace be with you all: Towards an ‘unarmed and disarming’ peace.”  

This title echoes what Pope Leo shared in the first moments of his pontificate in May, when he blessed the entirety of humanity with the words of the risen Christ, “Peace be with you all.” While this could have been understood simply as a pleasant greeting, His Holiness went on to dramatically break open the meaning of Jesus’s words by declaring that, in a world convulsing daily with violence and injustice, Christ’s peace is “unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering. It comes from God who loves us all unconditionally.”  

This short but robust declaration taught us anew that the peace of Christ is not achieved by conquest or domination. It is, instead, God’s call for us to abandon deeply-ingrained patterns of violence; to break the cycle of revenge, retaliation and escalation; to love our neighbors; to love our enemies; to heal divisions; and to overcome evil with good. Christ’s peace—“unarmed and disarming”—is  faithful nonviolence itself.  

By centering his very first World Day of Peace message on this phrase, Pope Leo is emphasizing the critical importance of an unarmed and disarming peace to his vision but also to the way forward in a world facing catastrophic violence.  By doing so, he is helping us to rediscover what “peace” in its most powerful sense actually means.

“Peace” is typically regarded as an abstract, utopian ideal; an absence of conflict; a tranquil state of mind; or an end to war often achieved through military victory or the domination of one side over another.  None of these define Christ’s nonviolent peace. Pope Leo has, in many ways, devoted his initial World Day of Peace message to doing so.

 

His Holiness’ Vision of Nonviolence

To explore the nonviolence at the heart of peace and the 2026 World Day of Peace message, it is important to underscore how Pope Leo has been lifting up nonviolence, and peace rooted in the spirit of nonviolence, since his installation. 

In addressing numerous examples of war, violence and injustice worldwide, His Holiness has reflected on importance of nonviolence in various ways, including “nonviolence as a method and as a style must distinguish our decisions, our relationships, our actions”; the next generation needs “witnesses of a different, nonviolent lifestyle”; and “from the local and daily level to that of the world order” we are in need of “the most credible protagonists of nonviolent processes of peacebuilding.” His Holiness has stated: “I hope…that every diocese may promote pathways of education in nonviolence, mediation initiatives in local conflicts, and welcoming projects that transform fear of the other into an opportunity for encounter.” The Holy Father sent a  message to Pax Christi USA that stated: “In the midst of the many challenges facing our world at this time, including widespread armed conflict, division among peoples, and the challenges of forced migration, efforts to promote nonviolence are all the more necessary.” Regarding the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, His Holiness said, “we are working, let’s say, on soft diplomacy, always inviting, encouraging the pursuit of nonviolence through dialogue and seeking solutions because these problems cannot be solved by war.” His Holiness moreover has stated, “Saints have witnessed that love defeats war, that only goodness disarms treachery and that nonviolence can destroy the abuse of power.”  Finally, reflecting on the closing of the Year of Jubilee, he stated, “let us educate ourselves in nonviolence, let us learn the art of reconciliation.”  

It is especially intriguing to note that the Vatican’s press announcement in October of the theme of the 2026 World Day of Peace message included this passage on its theme, which “invites humanity to reject the logic of violence and war, and to embrace an authentic peace based on love and justice. This peace must be unarmed, that is, not based on fear, threats or weapons. And it must be disarming, capable of resolving conflicts, opening hearts and generating mutual trust, empathy and hope…. It is not enough to call for peace; we must embody it in a way of life that rejects every form of violence, whether it be visible or systemic.” Each of these elements represents the nonviolent dynamics at work in His Holiness’ message.

 

Jesus’ nonviolent cornerstone of peace

In the World Day of Peace message, Pope Leo roots his call for peace in a key passage of the Gospel:: “Shortly before being arrested, in a moment of intimate confidence, Jesus said to those who were with him: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” And he immediately added: “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (Jn14:27). Their distress and fear were certainly connected to the violence soon to befall him. But, more deeply, the Gospels do not hide the fact that what troubled the disciples was his nonviolent response: a path that they all, Peter first among them, contested; yet the Master asked them to follow this path to the end.”

The disciples are disoriented, especially when Jesus commands them to put this “nonviolent response” into practice concretely themselves when, as His Holiness puts it, “he firmly repeats to those who would defend him by force: ‘Put your sword back into its sheath’ (Jn18:11; cf.Mt26:52).”

This is the great climax of Christ’s teaching to his disciples—and to the Church ever after. His command to reject violence as the solution to violence—even in this most harrowing moment—irrevocably encapsulates and deepens the core teaching of Jesus’ ministry, in which he had taught his disciples to love their enemies (Mt 5:44) and to turn the other cheek (Mt 5:39); when he nonviolently stopped men from stoning a woman accused of adultery (Jn 8:1-11) and when he called us to be peacemakers (Mt 5:9). 

Pope Leo then makes a profound connection: “The peace of the risen Jesus is unarmed, because his was an unarmed struggle in the midst of concrete historical, political and social circumstances.”  In short, Christ’s peace is nonviolent because Christ’s life and ministry were nonviolent.  This peace was not abstract, utopian, free from conflict, serene, or, conversely, the result of violent combat.  It was the fruit of nonviolent struggle.  It was a life worshipping the God of peace and nonviolence by overcoming evil with good. It was a life where Jesus himself in effect repeatedly put his own sword back in its sheath and taught his followers to do the same.

By incessantly sharing with the Church and the world how Christ’s peace is unarmed and disarming, Pope Leo is urging us to take up this “nonviolent struggle” in our own contexts. As His Holiness says, “Just as on the evening of Easter Jesus entered the place where his disciples were gathered in fear and discouragement, so too the peace of the risen Christ continues to pass through doors and barriers in the voices and faces of his witnesses. This gift enables us to remember goodness, to recognize it as victorious, to choose it again, and to do so together.”  We are not called to a violent struggle but the kind of ongoing unarmed struggle that the Holy Father is outlining here.

 

Nonviolent resistance at the heart of peace

Pope Leo does not simply point to an event 2000 years ago.  He urges us to put Gospel nonviolence at the heart of our life of faith today: “Christians must together bear prophetic witness to this novelty, mindful of the tragedies in which they have too often been complicit.”  He thus calls us to a nonviolent struggle against: the “confrontational logic” of our time; global military expenditures totaling 2.718 trillion dollars fueling strategies of military deterrence based on “fear and domination by force” and the “implementation of artificial intelligence have worsened the tragedy of armed conflict” with “decisions about life and death…increasingly ‘delegated’ to machines”; “an unprecedented and destructive betrayal of the legal and philosophical principles of humanism that underlie and safeguard every civilization”; and “the enormous concentrations of private economic and financial interests that are driving states in this direction.”

In response to what the Holy Father calls “this time of destabilization and conflict” the Holy Father envisions a nonviolent paradigm shift, rooted in our theology of a “defenseless God” who calls us to transform our approach to adversaries (“those who truly love peace also love the enemies of peace,” as Saint Augustine suggested) and to recognize that the power of goodness is disarming.  To live this nonviolent life, we do well, Pope Leo says, to learn from Saint Francis of Assisi, the great peacemaker in the 13th century, quoting Pope Francis: “’In the world of that time, bristling with watchtowers and defensive walls, cities were a theater of brutal wars between powerful families, even as poverty was spreading through the countryside. Yet there Francis was able to welcome true peace into his heart and free himself of the desire to wield power over others. He became one of the poor and sought to live in harmony with all.’ This is a narrative that we are called to continue today, and that means joining forces to contribute to a disarming peace, a peace born of openness and evangelical humility.”

 

Houses of peace rooted in nonviolence

How might we do this concretely?  Pope Leo writes, “Throughout the world, it is to be hoped that ‘every community become a “house of peace,” where one learns how to defuse hostility through dialogue, where justice is practiced and forgiveness is cherished.”[11]Now more than ever, we must show that peace is not a utopia by fostering attentive and life-giving pastoral creativity.”  Each parish, diocese, religious order, school, university and ministry could become a “a house of peace” by cultivating the theology, practices, tools of nonviolent relationship-building, nonviolent communication, and nonviolent movement-building, in the spirit of Pope Leo’s words: “alongside action, it is more necessary than ever to cultivate prayer, spirituality, and ecumenical and interreligious dialogue as paths of peace and as languages of encounter within traditions and cultures.”

Such nonviolent communities could invite a deep shift from typical norms and approaches.  As Pope Loe says, Against the strategy of domination and control, “we must promote self-awareness in civil societies, forms of responsible association, experiences of nonviolent participation, and practices of restorative justice on both a small and large scale.”

These “houses of peace” could transform lives and communities.  But they could also nourish larger institutions and structures.  As Pope Leo stresses, what is required now more than ever is “the disarming path of diplomacy, mediation and international law, which is sadly too often undermined by the growing violations of hard-won treaties, at a time when what is needed is the strengthening of supranational institutions, not their delegitimization.”

 

Conclusion

In his 2026 World Day of Peace message, Pope Leo XIV has illuminated in a profound way how Christ’s peace is unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering, and thus called the Church and the world to a more concrete path of Gospel nonviolence, including in the following ways.

Unarmed. The peace of Christ does not rely on violence or coercion. It does not rely on physical or psychological threats, or the weapons of domination. Instead, it is  process like the one Jesus commanded in the Garden of Gethsemani: “Put down your sword.”  It faces the challenges of violence and injustice not by responding in kind but with the unexpected stance: dispensing with the traditional  methods of retaliation and escalation and, instead, coming forward undefended with vulnerability and openness, and seeing what transformative, uncalculated possibility may transpire by taking violence out of one side of the equation. Pope Leo’s use of the word “unarmed” signifies the nonviolence of the “peace of Christ.”

Disarming: Peace is not only unarmed, it is also disarming.  To say that the peace of Christ is “disarming” emphasizes its agency.  It is an active process where not only is the  peacemaker unarmed but both parties are being disarmed – that when the peacemaker is unarmed it can set in motion a process of the disarming of the opponent, or at least a process that invites  both parties to abandon their weapons, attitudes, prerogatives, assumptions, and make way for a more fruitful way forward rooted in Christ’s peace. Pope Leo’s use of the word “disarming” signifies the nonviolence of the “peace of Christ.

Humble. The peace of Christ honors the integrity of the other.  For those rooted in Christ’s peace, they engage with the other with openness to their truth.  The dialogue begins without knowing the full answer or outcome. Any resolution will come from give and take, from each side bringing its piece of the truth, from dialogue and peaceable struggle that a “bigger truth” can be fashioned. Pope Leo’s use of the word “humble” signifies the nonviolence of the “peace of Christ.

Persevering. The peace of Christ takes time, listening, truth-telling, relentless persistence.  It means bringing forth what is essential and letting go of everything else.  It requires patience. Pope Leo’s use of the word “persevering” signifies the nonviolence of the “peace of Christ.” 

All of these features of Gospel nonviolence are echoed in how Pope Leo closes his first World Day of Peace message:

“’A brother that is helped by his brother is like a strong city’ (Prov18:19).’ May this be one of the fruits of the Jubilee of Hope, which has moved millions of people to rediscover themselves as pilgrims and to begin within themselves that disarmament of heart, mind and life. God will surely respond to this by fulfilling his promises: “He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more…” (Is2, 4-5).