Calls for Peace

By JP Misheff, April 8, 2026

It can sometimes feel as though the calls for peace from our spiritual and religious leaders land more hollowly than they should. We’ve heard it before, we’ve prayed for it many times. The question remains: when will it come? And how? And why is it not here already?

Our calls for peace come often through strained, exhausted voices. “How long, Lord?” is a very familiar refrain throughout the Bible (it’s mentioned at least 53 times). How long, indeed.

Cardinal Parolin, Vatican City’s secretary of state, is wondering too, and urging world leaders to step forward more prominently to stand for peace. “It is a utopia to think that peace is guaranteed by weapons and by balances imposed by the strongest, rather than by international agreements,” he said recently. He went further, getting specific, requesting radical disarmament, saying, “We firmly believe that arsenals must be emptied, starting with nuclear ones.”

Pope Leo has been steadily increasing his own calls for peace, making more bold statements, such as exhorting world leaders “not to dominate others, but to encounter them,” and has now called for a vigil for peace this coming Saturday, April 11th (you can tune in to St Peter’s at 1pm Central time on Vatican’s YouTube channel — see bottom of this post for tips on how you might engage more actively in this vigil).

A 2-week ceasefire has now been agreed to in the Iran conflict, yet Israel is claiming the areas of southern Lebanon that they’re currently attacking is not part of that deal.

Pope Leo sent, via Parolin, a very hopeful message to the village of Debel on Easter Sunday, saying,

“Today we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord. May you, in the midst of feelings of pain, anguish, and mourning, experience a deeper joy in your hearts today: Jesus gloriously triumphed over death. It is a joy that comes from heaven and that nothing can take away from you. In your misfortune, in the injustice you suffer, in the feeling of abandonment you experience, you are very close to Jesus.You are close to Him too on this Easter day when He defeated the forces of evil, and which resonates for you as a promise for the future. So don’t lose courage! None of your prayers, none of your gestures of solidarity, no sigh of weariness that you express is lost: Our Lady of Lebanon keeps everything in her heart and carries it to her Son. Pope Leo XIV gives each of you, and all the people you love, the Apostolic Blessing.”

USCCB president Bishop Coakley has recently heeded the call for boldness, saying: “I call on President Trump to step back from the precipice of war and negotiate a just settlement for the sake of peace and before more lives are lost.”

He went on to say,

“Pope Leo has invited everyone to join him in a prayer vigil for peace on Saturday, April 11. I make a special plea to my brother bishops, the priests, the laity, and all people yearning for true peace to join the Holy Father’s Vigil for Peace, whether virtually, or in parishes, chapels, or before the Lord present in the quiet of their hearts to join with our Holy Father as we pray for peace in our world.”

Please join us in praying with a special and renewed emphasis on confidence that peace is HERE, now. “With him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed” (Psalm 16). Peace is assured, even and especially in times of war. It doesn’t have to make sense for it to be true. That is the bedrock of our faith, it is profound yet utterly simple.

We do believe, help our unbelief!

To help inspire your prayer on Saturday, here are some helpful tips:

• Abandon desires for conflict, domination, and power, implore the Lord to grant peace to a world ravaged by wars. 
• Reject the globalisation of indifference to the deaths of thousands and the hatred and division caused by conflicts. 
• Convert to the peace of Christ, allowing our hearts to be transformed by nonviolent love rather than seeking to dominate others. 
• Make a commitment to ensure that the Easter gifts of harmony and peace grow and flourish everywhere and always throughout the world, starting within.