Pope Leo XIV

by Guillermo Alvarado

It is difficult to imagine a period in recent human history that has not been affected by wars-a resource invented by our species to resolve differences or conquer territories and wealth.

Humans are the only ones in nature who have used intelligence to produce weapons to eliminate each other. In fact, we now have the capacity to destroy not only ourselves, but all life on the planet-even the planet itself.

That is why it is comforting to hear the new head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, priortize peace for all, regardless of religious creed or ideology.

When he received representatives of the Eastern Churches, he affirmed that violence reigns supreme from the Middle East to Eastern Europe, from Lebanon to Syria, Tigray, and the Caucasus.

"It should provoke indignation," the prelate added, "because people die in the name of military conquest, and above all, people who have nothing to do with the reasons of the direct contenders."

Leo XIII, from whom Robert Prevost took his name and the corresponding successive number, went down in history for his encyclical Rerun Novarum, or “of new things,” in Spanish, where he raised the banners for the defense of workers during the industrial revolution.

In the midst of the development of modern capitalism, the Vatican sided with the poor, the marginalized and the exploited in the factories and the fields, and that pope laid the foundations of the so-called social doctrine of the church, which has been practiced intermittently ever since.

In fact, the recently deceased Francis revived this task and spoke out for the rights of the oppressed in the world, as well as for those who suffer exclusion for reasons of gender or sexual orientation, which shook the columns of St. Peter's Basilica.

Everything seems to indicate that Leo XIV will lay the foundations of his preach in the fight against wars, a titanic task in a world where the most developed countries spend a lot of money on the industry of death and very little on the defense of life.

He who sows peace will go down in history, he said this week, and not he who reaps victims and added that others are not enemies, but human beings, not bad people to be hated, but to be dialogued with. Words that need receptive ears and brains.