At 11.30 today, at the Holy See Press Office, Via della Conciliazione 54, a press conference was held to present the Message of the Holy Father Leo XIV for the 59th World Day of Peace, to be held on 1 January 2026, on the theme “Peace be with you: Towards an ‘unarmed and disarming’ peace”.
The speakers were: His Eminence Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J., prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development; Professor Tommaso Greco, full professor of philosophy of law at the University of Pisa; Don Pero Miličević, parish priest of Saints Luke and Mark Evangelists, Mostar, Bosnia; and Dr. Maria Agnese Moro, journalist, daughter of Aldo Moro.
The following are their interventions:
Intervention of His Eminence Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J.
Peace is not an irrelevant utopian dream. Peace cannot be imposed, nor can it be fabricated. Peace is not simply a matter of policy, nor is it an equilibrium of terror and fear. In Lebanon, Pope Leo said: “The path of mutual hostility and destruction in the horror of war has been travelled too long, with the deplorable results that are before everyone's eyes.”[1]
Pope Leo’s 2026 Message is a meditation which goes much deeper than policy or strategy. It locates peace in its primary home, the human heart, whatsoever its faith and especially if Christian. But our heart is not only peace-loving; it is also aggressive within itself and against others. We are tempted to wield “power over others” and to weaponize “thoughts and words”. St Augustine famously calls this the libido dominandi,the lust of domination.
The Message underscores the importance of undertaking the disarmament of each one’s own heart, despite the temptation, faced with the horror of our own belligerence, to discard the desire for peace altogether. This results in a distorted or even lost “sense of realism”. “Many today call ‘realistic’ those narratives devoid of hope, blind to the beauty of others and forgetful of God’s grace, which is always at work in human hearts, even though wounded by sin”.
What is realistic, rather, is each one taking responsibility for peace.
The Pope not only calls for the disarmament of hearts and effective dialogue, but also “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 multilateral institutions, not their delegitimization”.
In every country, terrible injustices, inequities, systemic unfairness cause so many to suffer in so many ways. The 2026 Message, like many earlier ones, denounces “the enormous concentrations of private economic and financial interests that are driving States” in the preparation and conduct of wars.
“Further technological advances and the military implementation of artificial intelligence have worsened the tragedy of armed conflict”. As societies, we need to learn to regulate technological advancements, with a view to human dignity and greater justice. Constant technological advancement and shrinking responsibility make warfare ever worse.
Fear is the fundamental hindrance to disarmament. “The idea of the deterrent power of military might, especially nuclear deterrence, is based on the irrationality of relations between nations built, not on law, justice and trust, but on fear and domination by force”. But “peace exists,” Pope Leo writes. “It has the gentle power to enlighten and expand our understanding; it resists and overcomes violence”. The human heart’s longing for peace can get beyond our fears and pretenses of domination.
So, if we really want peace, the Message pleads, we have to deal with our own inner, small-scale belligerence or warfulness, and here the “we” are not just political, economic and cultural leaders, but all of us. The Message argues for that “integral disarmament” first proposed by Pope John XXIII, “which can only be achieved through renewal of the heart and mind”.
As Augustine taught, those who give in to the logic of inevitable belligerence cannot do so without betraying their humanity, which so deeply longs for peace. He writes, “Let everyone who reflects with pain upon such great evils, upon such horror and cruelty, acknowledge that this is misery.” And anyone who endures them or thinks about them without anguish of soul, “has lost all human feeling”.[2]
In Lebanon, Pope Leo made “a heartfelt appeal to those who hold political and social authority … in all countries marked by war and violence: listen to the cry of your peoples who are calling for peace!”[3]The Message invites everyone to serve life, the common good and the integral development of people.
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[1]Leo XIV, Appeal at the end of Mass, Lebanon, 2 December 2025.
[2]Augustine,City of God, XIV, 7
[3] Leo XIV,Appeal at the end of Mass, Lebanon, 2 December 2025.
Intervention of Professor Tommaso Greco
We must believe in the reality of peace and in its ability to structure relationships between people and between states. The power of the words that the Holy Father chose to include in his Message for World Peace Day comes from the conviction, I would say the certainty, that peace is not an accidental condition that can result from a temporary and always precarious balance (of arms and powers), but is a precondition for thinking about human relations, and above all for making the most appropriate choices to ensure that peace can be, even before it is built, preserved and nurtured in the most effective ways.
The expression “unarmed and disarming peace” is linked to this, with the need first and foremost to change our outlook on the reality in which we live. And it therefore invites us, first of all, not to give in to an attitude that claims to be “realistic” but is based on a partial and distorted view of reality. This vision is partial and distorted because it forgets and hides the good, the light that exists and that can be productive if we decide to put it to work. “Peace exists, it wants to dwell in us, it has the gentle power to enlighten and broaden our intelligence, it resists violence and overcomes it.” In this sense, it is not only unarmed because it rejects the logic of weapons, but it is also disarming because it invites us to break out of that circle in which mistrust feeds fear, and fear drives us to mutual and unstoppable rearmament.
The most important gesture that the Message invites us to make is to use peace as a light that guides our path. Not as a horizon, which risks becoming unattainable, but as a precious heritage that we already possess and that must therefore be protected; as “a small flame” which, even though “threatened by a storm”, must be guarded, “never forgetting the names and stories of those who have borne witness to it”. In this sense, it is “a principle that guides and defines our choices”, and therefore asks us to reject the saying, too often repeated simplistically and mechanically, si vis pacem para bellum, inviting us to take seriously its opposite, si vis pacem para pacem: only by moving from peace can peace truly be guaranteed. It is not possible to do so, in fact, if peace is based on assumptions that deny it.
This challenge, which concerns everyone, is particular urgent for Christians, who must escape the accusation of powerlessness—or even of “collusion” with evil—in which many would like to enclose Christ's message, which is a message of peace, when it refuses to accept the logic of force and violence invoked in defence of good. To choose peace does not mean being blind to a reality that often consists of violence and the brutal use of force; just as it does not mean abandoning the victims of injustice. On the contrary, it means putting into practice everything that goodness suggests and that human civilization has been able to develop over the centuries. It means defending international law, remembering that its effectiveness does not depend primarily on the use of force, but rather on the conscious adherence of States to a relationship of mutual and ever-renewed recognition; always seeking dialogue in every form, remembering that this must be pursued precisely where it appears most difficult (even in this case, dialogue can be conceived more as a principle that guides choices than as a goal to be achieved, which fails at the first obstacle); orient our educational, training, and information policies in such a way as to privilege the good of peace and fraternity, rather than adapting them to lead young people and peoples to “admire” the use of force and what is expressed through force; and last but not least, not fuelling the reckless game of rearmament, which appears to be a search for a balance that can never be found and which sooner or later leads to the predictable use of weapons, which in the nuclear age cannot fail to generate unimaginable catastrophes. If Christians—especially Christian politicians—believe that these things are ineffective and “convert” to the discourse of force, they risk setting aside Christ's message precisely where it most needs to be put to the test of history; precisely where it suggests being translated into actions that shape the world and make it a kingdom as far removed as possible from violence and terror. Remembering these things—remembering them in particular in Europe, which today could point to a different path than the game of powers—is not “escaping reality,” but means recalling attention to the fact that nothing is inevitable, and that it is our choices that determine what is real.
Precisely for this reason, the Message is an invitation to make trust productive: we cannot break the climate of mistrust by acting in turn with mistrust. In this sense, it seems crucial to revive the words of Saint John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris, in which he called for “disarmament … to reach men’s very souls”, demanding that “the fundamental principles upon which peace is based … be replaced by the realization that true and lasting peace among nations cannot consist in the possession of an equal supply of armaments but only in mutual trust”.
Only trust builds trust, and in this, everyone’s responsibility counts. No destiny of war has already been written. It is necessary to learn, also with words, how to “defuse hostilities”.
Intervention of Don Pero Miličević
It is an honour to be here to present the Pope’s Message for the 59th World Day of Peace. The message that the Pope sends to the world announces the One who brought us peace and through whom it has come to us: it is the peace of the Risen Christ that gives us the strength to overcome the darkness of anxiety and enter into the light. In my life, I have experienced what the Pope emphasizes: “In order to overcome the darkness, it is necessary to see the light and believe in it”.
Thirty-two years ago, I experienced the darkness and evil of war. I lived in a village called Doljani, in the municipality of Jablanica. My mother Ruža gave birth to nine children: Branka, Miroslav, Branko, Damir, Dijana, Ivan, Anto, Marinko, and Pero. The happy childhood of a seven-year-old boy ended on 28 July 1993, when Muslim military units of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina attacked our village. They killed 39 people. I remember that day; I was playing next to the house with my twin brother Marinko and my older brother Anto. Our game was interrupted by a burst of gunfire. The bullets flew over our heads. When my mother and sister noticed, they took us into the house to save us from death. My father Andrija was not at home at the time; he had gone to help my aunt in the fields and was killed there that day. He was 45 years old. My mother was widowed at 44 with nine children, seven of whom were minors. My mother's sister, Aunt Pava, also died that day, burned in her house after being killed on the doorstep, as did three children of my mother’s other sister, Aunt Kata: Pero, Ivica, and Jure Soldo. Ivica had been married for only eleven days and Jure was a young man of twenty-one. When one child dies, it is already terrible, let alone three. I don't know how her heart didn’t break with grief. My mother’s third sister, Anica, survived by hiding in the mountains. My mother's cousin Ruža and my cousin Slavko also died that day. It seemed as if all the evil in the world had fallen upon us, and I must admit that it is not easy to remember.
On the same day, my mother and us minor children were taken to a prison camp called “Museum” in Jablanica, together with three hundred Croatian Catholics. We remained prisoners for seven months. During our imprisonment, we had to keep peace in our hearts and not think about revenge. But, as the Pope recalls in his Message, quoting Saint Augustine on the need to create an unbreakable friendship with peace, we too built peace with the One who is our peace. In the camp, in moments of inner turmoil, what sustained us was the daily prayer of the Rosary that our mother had taught us. It gave us hope. When we were captured, we did not know that our father had been killed; we found out months later.
The time spent in captivity was hard. We didn't have enough food, there was no hygiene, and we slept on cold granite slabs. After leaving the camp, we buried our father's bones; his body had remained unburied for seven months. Many people asked my mother and all of us how we could have endured all this. We would never have survived without faith, prayer, and the need for peace. It was precisely that education in faith in God that nourished us and helped us overcome the horrors we witnessed. Was there anger for everything I experienced? Yes. But when I became a priest in 2012 and began hearing confessions, I realized how necessary it is to have inner peace and that peace cannot be achieved without forgiveness, without confronting what one has experienced.
As the Pope emphasizes in his message, “When peace is not a reality that is lived, cultivated and protected, then aggression spreads into domestic and public life”. Peace must be lived, cultivated and protected. So, twenty years after leaving the camp, I returned to the place where we had been imprisoned. Tears flowed, but this helped me find peace. I was not the only one who needed it. Other children, during the war, lived the same horrors. This is why I decided to tell my story, because I want to reawaken the awareness that evil can be defeated with good and forgiveness, not with vengeance and weapons. As the Pope says, “goodness is disarming”: with it, peace is obtained. It is not the increase in weapons that guarantees it, but hearts prepared to welcome it, in the knowledge that it is a gift to be shared. Christ brings peace to the world not with weapons but with love, mercy and justice. Justice is precisely what man seeks, and peace is at the same time a work of righteousness (cf. Is 32:7).
The Pope points out: “In today’s world, justice and human dignity are at an alarming risk amid global power imbalances”. Goodness, love, diplomacy, spiritual and cultural initiatives keep the hope of peace alive.
Intervention of Dr. Maria Agnese Moro
The subtitle of the Message addressed to us and to everyone by Pope Leo – “An unarmed and disarming peace” – highlights a crucial point: no true peace is reached only by silencing weapons. For peace to be real and lasting, we must also defuse the mental and emotional mechanisms that underlie any act of violence and the radioactive waste that irreparable violence, whether perpetrated or suffered, brings with it. Restorative justice, which the Pope cites in his message as a tool to be supported and increased, can help to do this with its ability to restore humanity where dehumanization and its consequences have reigned.
Dehumanization: one cannot strike someone's body and destroy it unless one first considers them non-human, not like me; if you do not reduce them to a uniform, a function, an enemy, a ghost, and if in doing so, you do not put your own humanity in brackets, suspend it and ignore it. In the same way, those who have suffered violence, by hating those who have hurt them, dehumanize themselves and the object of their hatred.
How can we fully recover our humanity? The desire for a return arises from years of reflection, rethinking, and painful awareness for both those who have offended and those who have been offended. But for that desire to truly be realized, it needs an encounter with what Claudia Mazzucato calls “the difficult other”. That encounter, however, must be genuine, not polite or diplomatic. It must allow for terrible things to be said and heard. With mutual respect. Without minimizing or excusing anything, without defending oneself, but accepting everything.
It is difficult to do. It is very difficult to do alone. With the help of what restorative justice can offer it is challenging, but if you really want it, it is definitely feasible, even for normal people like me. And what does it offer? First of all, someone who invites you to participate. Someone with no ulterior motives, someone you can trust. Fifteen years ago, I was invited by Father Guido Bertagna who, at the request of a small group of participants in the armed struggle of the 1970s and 1980s (some linked to my father's story) and a small group of victims of that violence, had created, with Claudia Mazzucato and Adolfo Ceretti, also experts in restorative justice, an opportunity to talk to each other. Thanks to a private, free space (you go if you want, you leave when you want), respectful of everyone, where you can speak and listen, remain silent or talk about your pain without judgement or censorship. Difficult dialogues, accompanied and guided by competent mediators who are equally close to one and all.
In that place, one can express and accept pain. The encounter with the pain suffered by another is the first powerful and irreversible blow to dehumanization. If you feel pain, you are certainly human, you are like me. We have a language that brings us closer. It is the first thing about them that struck me. I thought that pain was mine; I had never thought about theirs, which I felt so much more intensely because it was never expressed as such, but always with phrases that escaped from their mouths after being held back for a long time. Being able to talk to them is painful and beautiful. Every word I say hurts them, but it acknowledges their humanity. You are able to listen to me and suffer for me and with me. Every word they say hurts me, but it acknowledges my humanity. You are able to listen to us, to believe in our intentions of good, then disfigured by the violence used. And to suffer for us and with us. True listening is a mutual recognition of humanity. In this speaking and listening lies all the justice that we and they need in order to live. You can hate ghosts forever, but not people. You can't do it. You become passionate about their difficult lives and their efforts to climb out of the abyss. About the honesty with which they look at themselves without embellishing or omitting anything. And they become passionate about my difficult life, and what they have done hurts them even more. Our common companion on the road is the irreparable. We for having suffered it, they for having created it. It is our common hell. But now we carry it together. Bound by an affection and friendship that illuminates our always somewhat troubled lives with tranquillity.
In the many meetings we have had together, us and them, in Italy and abroad to present “Il libro dell'incontro” (The Book of the Encounter), which recounts this experience, they tell us that all this is extraordinary, a miracle. In reality, it is normal, we are made for this; we are shaped by this need to seek each other out when everything pushes us apart, in the likeness of that Father who waits on the tower to see his wayward and ungrateful son appear, to run to meet him as soon as he sees him and embrace him before he can utter a single word of apology.
Yes, dear Pope Leo, peace is here and it works silently.
