Pope Leo XIV: Recognizing each other as brothers is antidote to all extremism

By Pope Leo XIV

Ten words. Ten words are not many, but they can start a conversation on the richness of Christian life. Hence, in order to start it, I would like to choose three of these 10 words, as the beginning of an imaginary dialogue with those who will read these pages: Christ, communion, peace. At first glance, it may seem these terms are unrelated, and do not follow from one another. But this is not the case. They can be woven into a relationship that I would like to further deepen with you, dear readers, so that we can grasp its newness and significance together.

First of all, Christ’s centrality. Every baptized person has received the gift of the encounter with Him, and has been touched by His light and His grace. Faith is precisely this: not the colossal effort of reaching a supernatural God, but rather, welcoming Jesus into our lives, the discovery that God’s face is not distant from our hearts. The Lord is neither a magical being nor an unknowable mystery. He drew near to us in Jesus, in that Man born in Bethlehem who died in Jerusalem, was risen and is alive today. Today! And the mystery of Christianity is that this God wants to be united with us, to be near us, to become our friend. In this way, we become Him.

Saint Augustine wrote: “Do you understand, brothers and sisters, the grace of God upon us; do you grasp that? Be filled with wonder, rejoice and be glad; we have been made Christ. For if He is the head, we are the members: the whole man is He and we”. (1) Christian faith is participation in divine life through the experience of Jesus’ humanity. In Him, God is no longer a concept or an enigma, but rather a Person who is close to us. Augustine experienced all this during his conversion, touching first-hand the power of friendship with Christ, which radically changed his life: “And where was I when I was seeking You? And You were before me, but I had gone away even from myself; nor did I find myself, much less You”! (2)

Moreover, Christ is the beginning of communion. His entire life was marked by this willingness to be a bridge: a bridge between humanity and the Father, a bridge between the people he encountered, a bridge between Him and the marginalized. The Church is this communion of Christ that continues throughout history, a community that lives diversity in unity.

Augustine makes use of the image of a garden to illustrate the beauty of a community of faithful that makes its own diversity a plurality that strives for unity and that does not descend into the disorder of confusion: “That garden of the Lord’s, brothers and sisters, includes, yes it includes, it certainly includes not only the roses of martyrs, but also the lilies of virgins, and the ivy of married people, and the violets of widows. There is absolutely no kind of human beings, dearly beloved, who need to despair of their vocation; Christ suffered for all. It was very truly written about him: ‘who wishes all men to be saved, and to come to the acknowledgment of the truth’” (1 Tm 2:4). (3) This plurality becomes communion in the one Christ. Jesus unites us despite our personalities, our cultural and geographic origin, our language and our history. The Oneness which He establishes among his friends is mysteriously fruitful and speaks to all: “And it is of all those who maintain concord between brothers and who love their neighbors that the Church consists”. (4)

Christians can and should be witnesses of this harmony, of this fraternity and this nearness, in today’s world, which is marked by many wars. This does not depend on our strength alone, but rather is a gift from Above, a gift from that God who, with his Spirit, promised us that he would always be by our side, living beside us: “We have therefore the Holy Spirit if we love the Church”. (5) The Church, home to different peoples, can be the sign that we are not condemned to live in perennial conflict and can embody the dream of a reconciled, peaceful and harmonious humanity. It is a dream that has a foundation: Jesus, his prayer to the Father for the unity of his own. And if Jesus prayed to the Father, then even more must we pray to him, so that he may grant us the gift of a world at peace. And finally, from Christ and communion, peace, which is not the fruit of the abuse of power or of violence, and is not linked to hatred or vengeance.

It is Christ who with the wounds of his Passion encounters his disciples, saying, “Peace be with you”. Saints have witnessed that love defeats war, that only goodness disarms treachery and that non-violence can destroy the abuse of power. We must look at our world, directly: we can no longer tolerate structural injustices in which those who have more always have more, and, conversely, those who have less become increasingly poor. There is the risk that hatred and violence will overflow, spreading misery among people: the desire for communion, recognizing that we are brothers and sisters, is the antidote to all extremism.

Father Christian de Chergé, prior of the Tibhirine Monastery, who was beatified with 18 religious men and women martyred in Algeria, after a close encounter with terrorists, received from Christ, in his communion with Him and with all God’s children, the gift of writing words that still speak to us today because they come from God. Asking himself which prayer he could address to the Lord after such a difficult trial, speaking of those who had violently invaded the monastery, he wrote the following: “Do I have the right to ask, disarm him, if I do not begin by asking: disarm me and disarm us in the community? Now this is my prayer which I confide to you in all simplicity”. Some 1,600 years earlier, in the same country in North Africa, Saint Augustine stated: “Let our lives be good; and the times are good. We make our times”. (6)

We can make our own time, with our witness, with prayers to the Holy Spirit, that he may make us men and women who are contagious with peace, welcoming Christ’s grace and spreading  the fragrance of his charity and mercy throughout the world. “We make our times”: Let us not be overcome by discouragement before the violence that we see. Let us ask God the Father every day for the power of the Holy Spirit to make the living flame of peace shine in the darkness of history.

Vatican City, 16 October 2025                              

1 Saint Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 21:8

2 Id., Confessions, V, 2: 2

3 Id., Sermons, 304, 3

4 Ibid, 359, 9

5 Id., Tractates on the Gospel of John, 32, 8:8

6 Id., Sermons, 80, 8