VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Politics can unite instead of divide as long as it refuses to settle for propaganda that feeds on creating enemies, Pope Leo XIV said.

Politics can unite, he said, if it “engages in the difficult and necessary art of an exchange of views, which seeks the common good.”

“It is still possible, it is always possible, to come together, even at a time of division, bombs and wars,” he said in a video message that aired before the start of a charity soccer match.

He urged people to have the “strength to believe and ask for a truce to come.” It is time to stop “the race of hatred. Our humanity is at stake.”