In his Message for the 11th World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Pope Leo warns that war has consequences that destroy far beyond the battlefield and says that we are to imitate the Lord’s offering of peace to work toward peace in the world.
The Church observes the World Day on September 1st with this year’s theme being, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4).
In this way, the Holy Father insisted, we are called to safeguard the many “ecosystems” entrusted to us: the ecosystems of creation, of human relationships and of the human heart itself.
“The true tools for building peace,” Pope Leo underscored, “are not weapons of destruction; instead, they are truth, dialogue, patience, goodness, justice, mercy, understanding, care and love,” which he said flow from hearts shaped by the Gospel and sustained by God’s grace.