ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday denounced any religious justification for wars raging around the world, saying “there is no such thing as a holy war.”

“Only peace is holy,” Leo said in a video-message to a gathering of religious leaders in the Italian hilltop town of Assisi.

The American pope was supposed to have presided over the gathering in person, but had to cancel his participation as he recovers from Oct. 13 lung cancer surgery.

Instead Leo sent a videotaped message that was broadcast to the delegates, who included the Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, as well as Muslim, Buddhist and other Christian leaders.

They were in Assisi, the birthplace of the peace-loving St. Francis, to mark the 40th anniversary of a landmark interfaith peace meeting called by St. John Paul II. That encounter, controversial at the time because it featured leaders of different faiths praying together, spawned a movement of interreligious peace appeals and gatherings.

In his message, the American pope denounced the “troubling revival of war as an instrument of international politics” and its religious justifications by leaders.

“Precisely in these times marked by a culture of power, there is a need to cultivate the spirit of Assisi,” he said. “War can never be waged in the name of God,” he said. “We must rebuild peace everywhere, not prepare for more wars.”

Russia’s Orthodox Church has justified Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “holy war” against a Western world it considers has fallen into evil.

Leaders on all sides of the Iran war have used religion to justify their actions. U.S. officials, especially Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have invoked their Christian faith to cast the war as a Christian nation trying to vanquish its foes with military might.

Leo has consistently rejected such justifications as a perversion of religion itself, most stridently in his first encyclical “Magnificent Humanity” in which he said fighting in the name of religion “means attacking religion itself.”

The Assisi gathering came as the Vatican is accelerating its humanitarian efforts for Ukraine following the entry into effect of a localized cease-fire in the devastated southern Ukrainian city of Oleshky. The pope’s chief almsgiver, Monsignor Luis Marín de San Martín, on Tuesday began a three-day visit to Ukraine and was bringing several trucks worth of winter clothes, blankets and food to Kyiv for distribution.

Marín de San Martín was planning to visit Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro and Fastiv, Vatican News said.

“We want to understand directly the needs and meet with the local people, real people, real faces,” he told Vatican News. “Above all we want to convey to them the Holy Father’s concern and tender care. In their suffering, they are not alone.”

Leo had called for a cease-fire and the delivery of food and medicine in Oleshky, and the safe and voluntary evacuation of its people during an Oct. 16 phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which the pontiff initiated from the hospital where he was recovering from surgery.

Leo followed up three days later, back at the Vatican, with a call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. According to the Vatican, Leo noted his appeal for a cease-fire to Putin and “expressed the hope that cooperation between both parties will allow for the delivery of food and medical aid, and for the voluntary and safe evacuation of the civilian population.”

The initiatives took place after Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the papal envoy for the Ukraine-Russia war, finished his third mission to Moscow on Sept. 30 and the first under Leo’s pontificate.

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