Pope Leo Offers Message of Peace in 1st Easter Mass Leading Vatican

Pope Leo XIV shared a message of peace on April 5 while celebrating his first Easter Mass as pontiff, calling on nations in global wars to lay down their weapons and seek peace through dialogue.

Leo, the first U.S.-born pope, said while giving the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City: “Let us allow our hearts to be transformed by [Jesus Christ’s] immense love for us. Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace. Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue. Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them.”

Speaking as the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran has entered its second month, and as Russia continues its years-long war with Ukraine, Leo said there’s a sense of indifference to “the deaths of thousands of people … to the repercussions of hatred and division that conflicts sow … to the economic and social consequences they produce.”

Leo, 70, did not mention the wars by name but instead quoted the late Pope Francis, who, during his final public appearance during Easter last year, said there is a “great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day.”

Francis died the next day, on Easter Monday, after suffering from pneumonia and a respiratory infection.

The pope’s Urbi et Orbi blessing, Latin for “to the city and the world,” is a papal address often given on certain solemn occasions, including Easter and Christmas.

Although the blessing traditionally includes a listing of the world’s woes by name, and Leo did follow that formula during his Christmas blessing in 2025, Leo departed from that tradition on Easter.

The pope earlier in the day addressed roughly 50,000 faithful from an open-air altar in St. Peter’s Square that was surrounded by white roses. The steps that led down to the piazza where the faithful were gathering were brimming with spring perennials.

During his homily, Leo called on the faithful to retain their hope in the face of death, which looms “in the abuses that crush the weakest among us, because of the idolatry of profit that plunders the earth’s resources, because of the violence of war that kills and destroys.”

The pope said there would be a prayer vigil for peace on April 11 in the basilica.

“On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that makes us feel powerless in the face of evil,’’ he said while speaking from the loggia.

During Easter Sunday’s ceremonies, Leo greeted the world’s faithful in 10 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, and Latin—a practice that had lapsed during the leadership of Pope Francis.

Leo walked out of the loggia’s shadow to wave to the thousands cheering below before he retreated into the basilica. Later, he greeted the faithful in the piazza from the popemobile before traveling toward the Tiber River down Via della Conciliazione.

During this year’s Holy Week, Leo resumed the tradition of washing the feet of priests on Holy Thursday, a gesture of encouragement to the clergy. Pursuing inclusivity, Pope Francis had washed the feet of women, non-Christians, and prisoners while traveling to prisons and homes for the disabled.

On Good Friday, Leo became the first pope in decades to carry a wooden cross during the entire Way of the Cross procession at Rome’s Colosseum.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.