Vatican City, Tuesday 21 July 2026 – From today, Pope Leo XIV’s book Disarmata e disarmante. La pace è un dono (“Unarmed and disarming: peace is a gift”) Libreria Editrice Vaticana, pp. 192, €16), introduced by a hitherto unpublished text, will be available in bookshops.

This book, edited by Alessandro Banfi, is the first anthology to draw on various addresses by Pope Prevost on the theme of peace since the day of his election, 8 May 2025.

The world is gripped by a “piecemeal Third World War” (Pope Francis). Leo XIV calls for “everyone to make peace the cause of their lives”. For, as the Pontiff writes in the Introduction to this book, “the Church today humbly brings one question to everyone’s attention: should the human race continue to inhabit the Earth? The combination of cyber dominance and global rearmament compels us to ask this question in all seriousness”. War is frightening. To everyone. But, Pope Prevost reminds us, war is not waged solely by the powerful. It starts from the heart of each individual when one succumbs to resentment and vengeance, when forgiveness is scorned and power glorified. When words do not build bridges, but raise walls. When, in politics, the path of diplomacy is abandoned and the shortcut of force is favoured over than the patient and fruitful art of dialogue. And disarmament is the only means, according to the American pontiff, that can enable our world to have a future free from the threat of a violent end at the hands of humankind.

These pages form a theology of peace of pressing relevance; one that speaks to believers and non-believers alike. For war is an “adventure of no return” (John Paul II) that we can all, together, avert for our own present and for the future of those who will come after us.

Robert Francis Prevost was born on 14 September 1955 in Chicago, in the United States. In 1977 he entered the novitiate of the Order of Saint Augustine. On 29 August 1981 he gave his solemn vows and on 19 June 1982 he was ordained a priest. In 2001 he was elected Prior General of the Order. In 2015 he was appointed bishop of Chiclayo, Peru. In 2023 Pope Francis entrusted him with the roles of Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. He was created a cardinal on 30 September 2023. He was elected Pope on 8 May 2025, choosing the name Leo XIV.

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