Pope Leo XIV renews his appeal for peace in Ukraine

At the end of the Angelus on Sunday 6 September 2026, from the apostolic palace, Pope Leo XIV renewed his appeal for dialogue and peace in Ukraine. “With a heavy heart I have followed the news of the violent attacks that have recently struck several cities and civilian infrastructures in Ukraine, causing the death of innocent people,” he said, before issuing “a fresh appeal that the violence may cease, that the destruction may stop, that hearts may open to dialogue and to peace!”

The facts he laments are recent. Strikes again hit Zaporizhzhia and its region; on Friday 4 September a device struck, in the very centre of Kyiv, the central building of the Ukrainian security service. The human tolls remain provisional and attributed to the Ukrainian authorities: at least one dead and twenty-five wounded are reported in the last twenty-four hours, while an attack on 1 September on railway installations in Kyiv is said to have left at least twelve dead. These figures, not independently verified, differ from one count to another.

On the same day, two American envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, were expected in Ukraine, bearing a proposal presented as intended to end the conflict, the day after a three-hour meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The Pope passed no judgement on their mission; he expressed a wish: “I hope that the efforts undertaken in these recent days to resume negotiations will bear concrete fruit and open the way to diplomacy.” And he united his heart “to the suffering of the people, who for years have lived in anguish and fear.”

Against the killing of the innocent, the law of God knows no exception. The fifth commandment forbids the shedding of the blood of him who has not deserved death, and the Catechism of the Council of Trent, expounding the precept “Thou shalt not kill,” teaches that the law “excepts no one; neither rich, nor poor, nor powerful.”

True peace is not merely the silence of arms: it is the tranquillity of order, the fruit of justice, and a gift to be asked of God before it is looked for from men. “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” The Sovereign Pontiff’s appeal here rejoins the Church’s constant lament before the useless slaughter: that the powerful render account for the blood they shed, and that the faithful, to whom prayer and penance are given for weapons, cease not to implore peace.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fifth commandment. Gospel according to Saint Matthew V, 9 (Douay-Rheims, Vulgate). Benedict XV, note to the leaders of the belligerent peoples (1 August 1917), on “the useless slaughter.”