In a moving address to aid organizations supporting Eastern Christians, Pope Leo XIV condemned the wave of violence engulfing the region, saying it strikes “with a diabolical intensity previously unknown.”
Speaking on June 26 at the close of the plenary assembly of ROACO (Reunion of Aid Agencies for the Oriental Churches), the Pope honored those who remain faithful amid suffering — and those who bring them relief.
“You are a breath of oxygen to the Eastern Churches,” he told the assembly gathered in the Clementine Hall. “For many people, poor in means but rich in faith, you are a light that shines amid the dark shadows of hatred.”
Leo XIV, elected just weeks ago, has made peace and ecclesial unity central to his pontificate. His tone was sober but resolute as he named recent atrocities: the “tragic and inhumane” situation in Gaza, the war-scarred Middle East, Ukraine, and a deadly attack on the Church of Saint Elias in Damascus.
He warned that the spread of war has rendered entire regions “covered by a cloud of hatred that renders the air unbreathable and toxic.”
Propaganda feeds conflict
The Pope decried not only violence, but the propaganda that feeds it.
“People must not die because of fake news,” he said. “We must reject false causes — fruits of emotional manipulation and rhetoric.”
He pointed sharply to the arms trade: “People are beginning to realize the amount of money that ends up in the pockets of merchants of death; money that could be used to build new hospitals and schools is instead being used to destroy those that already exist.”
He lamented a global retreat from the rule of law: “It is troubling to see that the force of international law and humanitarian law seems no longer to be binding … This is unworthy of our humanity, shameful for all mankind and for the leaders of nations.”
Witnesses to the light of the East
Still, Leo XIV’s words were not without hope. He praised Eastern Christians who “respond to evil with good,” who stay rooted in their traditions, and who, often unnoticed, “join the great ranks of martyrs and saints of the Christian East.”
“In the dark night of conflict,” he said, “you are witnesses to the light of the East.”
He urged the wider Church to rediscover this light. Quoting St. John Paul II, he recalled that “the Church must learn once again to breathe with both lungs, the Eastern and the Western.”
He called on seminaries and Catholic universities to teach the history and treasures of the Eastern Churches and reminded Western Catholics that these are not distant communities but “our next-door neighbors,” due to widespread migration.
“Their sense of the sacred, their deep faith, confirmed by suffering, and their spirituality, redolent of the divine mysteries,” he said, “can benefit the thirst for God, latent yet present, in the West.”
Pope Leo concluded with a call to perseverance and unity, entrusting this shared path “to the intercession of the Holy Mother of God and of the Apostles Peter and Paul, who united East and West.”
