Pope Leo XIV urges Europe to revive Schuman spirit for peace

Pope Leo XIV on Monday urged religious leaders to spread messages of peace and unity as he ended a four-day visit to France, using the example of Europe’s post-World War II reconciliation to underline his appeal for dialogue. He said Europe should draw on its tradition of engagement to face current challenges such as war, migration and polarisation.

At an interreligious meeting in Metz, Leo told Jewish, Muslim, Protestant and Orthodox leaders that people of faith shared a responsibility to build friendships across borders in the cause of peace. Recalling the example of French statesman Robert Schuman, he said religious discourse must reject violence and oppression.

Leo travelled to the eastern French city of Metz, near the borders with Luxembourg and Germany, for the meeting at a conference centre named after Schuman, one of the founding figures of European unity. Referring to Schuman’s efforts to promote dialogue even among rivals, Leo said, “Indeed, to invoke God’s name in order to justify violence or oppression is to profane that name. Religious discourse must constantly call for the disarmament of hearts and words.”

His visit to officially secular but once strongly Catholic France has been marked by repeated calls for Europe to remember its Christian heritage and apply it to today’s ethical and geopolitical challenges. On Sunday, at the Catholic shrine in Lourdes, he criticised legislation recently approved in France allowing medically assisted dying, calling it “false compassion”. Large crowds turned out through the visit, including 800,000 people at Leo’s Mass at Paris’ Place de la Concorde, a turnout that surprised even organisers.

On Monday morning, Leo’s Air France charter was escorted by two French fighter jets on the flight from Lourdes to Metz. Later in the day, in his final event in France, he was due to celebrate Mass at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Metz, one of the leading examples of French Gothic architecture. Its stained-glass windows include work by 20th century Jewish artist Marc Chagall, and the building is known as the “Lanterne du Bon Dieu”, or “The Good Lord’s Lantern”.

Schuman is best known for the 1950 Schuman Declaration, issued five years after the end of World War II, which proposed a European Coal and Steel Community linking production between historic rivals France and Germany. The idea was based on the belief that shared economic interests would make another war between them “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible”. The body became one of the early European institutions that later led to the European Union. Schuman, a resistance fighter who was imprisoned by the Nazis, was declared “venerable” in 2021, a step towards possible sainthood. Leo’s final day in France brought together that history and his message that dialogue, peace and unity remain essential in confronting Europe’s current challenges.

With PTI Inputs

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