Wir danken Angelina Giannopoulou für die Möglichkeit, diesen Beitrag zur kämpferischen Friedensbotschaft von Papst Leo XIV auf unserer Homepage zu veröffentlichen. Angelina hat den Text im Rahmen des Dialogs zwischen Marxisten und Christen im Netzwerk unseres Kooperationspartners Dialop verfasst. Der Beitrag ist auf der Website der europäischen Linken transform erschienen: https://transform-network.net/blog/analysis/an-anti-war-catholic-church/
11 May 2026
Is the Catholic Church becoming the new backbone of the global anti-war movement? From confronting Trumpism to advocating for nuclear disarmament, Pope Leo XIV is determined to keep the anti-war and pro-peace flags flying high.
This article explores the clear stance of the head of the Catholic Church as well as a dynamic current within it, resisting a new wave of imperialism.
The most central dividing line of the contemporary world runs between a thanatopolitics of wars, genocides, surging military expenditures, and the systematic sacrifice of the welfare state and income redistribution on one side, and a politics of peace, the defence of life, and the protection of victims of armed conflict, climate catastrophe, and deepening social inequality on the other. This divide cuts across every party, movement, and institution of social and political representation worldwide.
A Moral and Ideological Conflict
The emergence of an unabashed imperialist discourse – one that openly dismisses international law and the entire post-World War II international order – has left all political actors stripped bare before the question of what they actually stand for. In this conjuncture, the stance of the Catholic Church, anchored in the bold and unequivocal positions of Pope Leo XIV but extending well beyond them, constitutes a critical moment in a conflict that carries profound ideological dimensions; one that concerns nothing less than the formation of a new collective ethos for the so-called Western world.
The Confrontation with Trumpism
Pope Leo XIV, who initially appeared less inclined toward the outspoken public interventions that characterised his predecessor Francis, quickly demonstrated that he has no intention of ceding the public sphere to the feverish warmongering of Trumpism, or to the broader “Internationale of Reaction”. He moved into direct confrontation with the U.S. president, triggering a series of responses from the American presidency that veered into the absurd. J.D. Vance – who “discovered” Catholicism in 2019 – proceeded to lecture the Pope on being “more careful when speaking about theological matters,” while Trump accused the pontiff of “catering to the radical left” and being “weak on crime,” following the Pope’s condemnation of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. What initially appeared to some as a symbolic appointment – the first North American pontiff serving as a moral counterweight to Trumpism – is proving to be precisely that.
Pope Leo XIV’s first words after his election were devoted entirely to peace: “Peace be with you… This is the peace of the Risen Christ, an unarmed and disarming peace, humble and persevering”, signalling that the Catholic Church not only refuses to lend any form of legitimacy to the great imperialist powers as they invade sovereign states, commit genocide against peoples, and abduct elected leaders, but that it intends to stand firmly in the camp of the anti-war movement: alongside every social, political, and institutional voice pressing for sustainable peace and working to secure the conditions that make it possible. This orientation was given concrete institutional expression when the Vatican, on 1 May, on the occasion of the 11th Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, called for the elimination of nuclear arsenals:
«Their elimination is an indispensable responsibility that requires concrete and credible steps… A just, secure, and lasting peace rests on a single pillar: disarmament… In a time of growing tensions that are shaking the foundations of international security, it is necessary to examine the essential prerequisites for lasting peace” — including nuclear disarmament and “overcoming a security model based on fear and the threat of force.»[1]
An institution like the Catholic Church leaves a clear sociopolitical imprint when its leadership succeeds in giving voice to the most powerful and mobilised currents within it, those tendencies that are most dynamic and energised in any given historical moment. Consequently, what matters equally is both the personal character of the pontiff himself, his social and political theology, and the broader momentum of the Catholic world.
One Pope, Many Marchers
Pope Leo XIV appears to have held an anti-war stance from early in his life: as a young man, he marched alongside fellow Augustinians as “Agostiniani per la pace” (Augustinians for Peace) against the Euromissile deployment, at the mass demonstration in Rome on 22 October 1983. The photograph recently published by the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto[2], showing a young Robert Prevost among the marchers, was taken by Gianni Novelli, a Stigmatine priest and peace activist. The Pope also appears to be shaped by liberation theology, and many of his past statements reveal the sharp edge of his critique of the current socioeconomic order. In a speech delivered some twenty years ago, he declared:
«The reality of unjust poverty and marginalisation is one of the most pressing problems of the world today, and not only in the ‘Third World’… No one can be a Christian today and escape the ‘cry of the poor’ and the fight for justice. The impoverishment of millions of people is a true ‘sacrament’ of sin in the world.[3]
The theological and political influences that have shaped him are documented in a book released this week — Liberi sotto la grazia[4] (Free Through Grace), published jointly with the Vatican publishing house by Rocco Ronzani, Miguel Ángel Martín Juárez, and Michael Di Gregorio.
Yet beyond Leo XIV himself, there exists a mass current – networks, organisations, and parishes of the Catholic Church across the United States and Europe – that is mobilising against the international reaction, against the U.S.-Israeli war frenzy, and against the submission of European elites to both. In the United States, parishes are participating en masse in street demonstrations and the No Kings campaign, confronting ICE operations in their communities, while networks such as the Interfaith Alliance are organising trainings for clergy against authoritarianism and Christian nationalism. Theological circles and communities of Christian intellectuals and scholars are organising spaces[5] aimed at articulating a radical political theology capable of contesting the global far right and resisting the instrumentalisation of Christianity — a Christianity being debased into a hybrid of reactionary integralist Catholicism and self-aggrandising neo-evangelicalism. In Europe too, anti-war initiatives, the solidarity movement with Palestine, and the StopReArm campaign against the surge in military spending across European budgets are being embraced by Catholics and Catholic organisations, demonstrating that the dividing line between war and life itself can generate the conditions for broad social and political alliances between left, green, and democratic forces on one side, and the Church on the other.
[1] “Vatikan: Atom-Abrüstung einziger Weg zu sicherem Frieden”, https://www.vaticannews.va/de/vatikan/news/2026-05/heiliger-stuhl-uno-atom-waffen-abruestung-einziger-weg-frieden.html, 2 May 2026.
[2] Luca Kocci, “Prevost pacifista in piazza, storia di una foto”, https://ilmanifesto.it/prevost-pacifista-in-piazza-storia-di-una-foto, 16 April 2026.
[3] “Buch zeigt: Papst Leo XIV. früh von Befreiungstheologie geprägt”, https://katholisch.de/artikel/68411-buch-zeigt-papst-leo-xiv-frueh-von-befreiungstheologie-gepraegt, 4 May 2026.
[4] “A Papa Leone XIV la prima copia di ‘Liberi sotto la grazia’”, https://www.vaticannews.va/it/papa/news/2026-05/papa-leone-xiv-libro-liberi-sotto-la-grazia-priore-agostiniani.html, 2 May 2026.
[5] An interesting initiative is the “Theology Beer Camp” scheduled for this coming October: https://theologybeer.camp/.
Cover image: Donald Trump: © Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons / Pope Leo XIV: © Mazur/cbcew.org.uk, Catholic Church England and Wales via flickr. own compilation and editing.