One in Christ / Daniel Conway

Nonviolence is the way to human flourishing, only way to lasting peace

(En Espanol)

Nonviolence, as a method and a style, must distinguish our decisions, our relationships, and our actions. (Pope Leo XIV, May 30, 2025)

During his first year as pope, Leo XIV has spoken consistently and passionately about peace. In fact, our Holy Father has established himself as an “apostle of nonviolence,” emphasizing nonviolence as a core method and style for all decisions, relationships and actions.

Pope Leo argues that Jesus demonstrated nonviolence as the true power over evil, and he frequently urges global leaders to abandon the desire for domination, choosing dialogue over weapons.

It would be easy to underestimate the importance of the pope’s insistence on peace as the most urgent and essential challenge that we face today. Hasn’t every pope—especially since St. John XXIII’s encyclical “Pacem in Terris” (“Peace on Earth”)—taught that peacemaking is essential to the pursuit of happiness and the common good?

Yes, but Pope Leo’s emphasis on nonviolence as central to all decisions, relationships and actions offers some new insights into what genuine “peace on Earth” requires.

For Pope Leo, nonviolence is not just a strategy for resistance against oppression but a total way of life, integral to Christian witness and social engagement. He argues that nonviolence is a “true power over evil” and that true peace can never be imposed by force. Frequently during the first 12 months of his pontificate, Leo XIV has warned that the world is becoming accustomed to war and indifference, calling for an active rejection of violence.

During his April 2026 Easter messages, for example, the Holy Father stated that good can never come from the abuse of power and that the Gospel demands a departure from what he calls “the logic of war,” which is always abusive. The pope’s first Easter message calls all Catholic dioceses in the universal Church to promote “education in nonviolence, mediation in local conflicts and projects that transform fear into encounters.”

The model for Christian nonviolence is, of course, the crucified Christ who, from the moment his passion began in the agony of the garden until his ultimate surrender on the cross, refused to disobey the will of his heavenly Father.

Acceptance, which is an active virtue rather than a passive expression of weakness, is what Jesus taught his disciples (all of us) by his passion, death and resurrection.

In his 2026 World Day of Peace message, Pope Leo XIV writes:

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” (Jn 14:27). 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 way of Jesus continues to cause unease and fear. He firmly repeats to those who would defend him by force: “Put your sword back into its sheath” (Jn 18:11; cf. Mt 26:52). The peace of the risen Jesus is unarmed, because his was an unarmed struggle in the midst of concrete historical, political and social circumstances. Christians must together bear prophetic witness to this novelty, mindful of the tragedies in which they have too often been complicit.

The peace of the risen Jesus is always nonviolent. Blessed are they who choose to follow in his footsteps.

The Holy Father is not naïve about the political, social and economic realities that make war seem inevitable. He is also keenly aware that religious concepts and language are too often used to justify armed intervention and the dominance of force. As he observes in his World Day of Peace message:

For, as has been suggested, “the best way to dominate and gain control over people is to spread despair and discouragement, even under the guise of defending certain values.” Against this strategy, 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.

Nonviolence is the only way to ensure human flourishing. It is the way of Jesus and the only way to achieve genuine, lasting peace.
 

(Daniel Conway is a member of The Criterion’s editorial committee.) †