ybvdadminuserVATICAN CITY (RNS) – Pope Francis urged world leaders to foster dialogue and peace — even as the threat of a world war looms larger — and addressed polarization in the United States during his annual speech to Vatican ambassadors from all over the world on Thursday (Jan. 9).
“In the face of the increasingly concrete threat of a world war, the vocation of diplomacy is to foster dialogue with all parties, including those interlocutors considered less ‘convenient’ or illegitimate to negotiate with,” the pope said.
Pope Francis, who recently turned 88, wasn’t able to deliver the lengthy speech to the ambassadors because of a cold and asked an aide to do so in his place.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Francis has urged the international community to work toward negotiating a peace and refrained from condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin. While this approach has led to criticism, the pope has steadfastly maintained that the road to peace requires going beyond a binary thinking of “good guys” and “bad guys.” In the same way, he has urged Israel and Palestinians to seek reconciliation. Francis’ view of international diplomacy reflects the Vatican’s long-standing attempts to stay out of the fray amid national conflicts.
In his speech, the pope acknowledged that forgiveness and reconciliation are not enough to promote peace without truth, which he said has been eroded in recent decades by the rise of social media and the spread of fake news. Francis beckoned political leaders to return to a reality-based understanding of truth, criticizing modern tendencies to create personal narratives, defer to conspiracy theories or coalesce into like-minded groups.
“We see increasingly polarized societies marked by a general sense of fear and distrust of others and of the future, which is aggravated by the continuous creation and spread of fake news, which not only distorts facts but also perceptions,” the pope said, adding that this trend coincides with the rise of conflicts and terrorism “such as those that recently occurred in Magdeburg in Germany and in New Orleans in the United States.”
“This phenomenon generates false images of reality, a climate of suspicion that foments hate, undermines people’s sense of security and compromises civil coexistence and the stability of entire nations,” Francis said, citing the assassination attempt on President-elect Donald Trump as an example.
To overcome the growing polarization and proliferation of falsehoods, Francis urged nations to invest in media literacy education to equip young people with critical thinking skills and a broader understanding of the world surrounding them. “A diplomacy of hope is consequently, above all, a diplomacy of truth,” he said.
Francis also criticized international bodies for attempting to impose their beliefs on sovereign nations. He criticized forms of ideological colonization, where groups “advance divisive ideologies that trample on the values and beliefs of peoples,” which he said contribute to creating a cancel culture. “In this regard, it is unacceptable, for example, to speak of an alleged ‘right to abortion’ that contradicts human rights, particularly the right to life,” he said.
Pope Francis had already reinforced the church’s stance against abortion in his New Year’s speech, where he appealed for a “firm commitment” to respect life from conception to natural death.
A little country with a tiny gross domestic product and an even smaller army, the Holy See has always taken an active role in multilateral initiatives to promote its vision for the common good. But the pope admitted these multilateral bodies are no longer as effective in tackling modern-day challenges, such as climate change, public health and artificial intelligence. “Many of them are in need of reform,” Francis said, stressing that the changes should come with “respect for the equal sovereignty of states.” He also warned against the trend of countries grouping into “like-minded clubs,” just as more nations join NATO or the intergovernmental organization known as BRICS.
“My wish for the year 2025 is that the entire international community will work above all to end the conflict that, for almost three years now, has caused so much bloodshed in war-torn Ukraine and has taken an enormous number of lives, including those of many civilians,” Francis said.
He also appealed to the principle of the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki, where 35 countries, including the Soviet Union, agreed to respect one another’s territorial sovereignty and refrain from pursuing offensive acts, in an effort to ease tensions between the East and the West. Russia has perceived NATO’s expansion since then as a violation of the accord, and even the pope accused NATO of “barking on Russia’s door.”
Francis also renewed his “appeal for a ceasefire and the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza” and asked that Palestinians be granted humanitarian aid. He reinforced his support for a two-state solution and restoring Jerusalem as a safe city for dialogue and encounter by Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions.
“War is always a failure! The involvement of civilians, especially children, and the destruction of infrastructures is not only a disaster, but essentially means that between the two sides only evil emerges the winner,” he said.
The pope criticized Israeli attacks that killed Palestinian civilians, including children, calling it “cruelty, not war” in a previous speech to cardinals on Dec. 22. This time, Francis condemned the bombing of hospitals and other necessary infrastructure, causing Palestinian children to freeze to death. He called on the international community to “take active steps to ensure that inviolable human rights are not sacrificed to military needs.”
The pope remembered other, less-reported conflicts in the world, especially in the African countries of Sudan, the Sahel, Mozambique and Congo. He also spoke of the ongoing civil war in Myanmar and mentioned the “various situations of heated political and social conflict” that impact Haiti, Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia and Nicaragua, where the pope urged the local governments to grant religious freedom and fundamental rights to all.
He called for the respect of the territorial integrity and unity of Syria, recovering from the fall of its leader Bashar Assad, who fled the country in early December. Francis also offered encouragement to Lebanon amid its social and economic crisis to “remain a country and a message of coexistence and peace.”
The pope condemned all modern forms of slavery, from unfair working conditions to drug addiction to human trafficking. The pope also spoke about migration, which he lamented being “still shrouded in a dark cloud of mistrust,” and he called for better policies and cooperation among nations to ensure the rights of migrants.
Reinforcing his appeal that the death penalty be eliminated in every nation, the pope said that “there is no debt that allows anyone, including the state, to demand the life of another.” U.S. President Joe Biden recently commuted the death penalty of 37 federal death row inmates — an action the Vatican and other faith leaders had urged him to take. Biden was expected to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican on Friday for the last time during his presidency but had to cancel to address the fires in California.
This year is an important anniversary for Catholic faithful, as they celebrate a Jubilee that marks 2025 years of the faith. “From the Christian standpoint, the Jubilee is a season of grace. How I would like this year 2025 to be truly a year of grace, abounding in truth, forgiveness, freedom, justice and peace!” the pope concluded.
