During his weekly prayer in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV made a powerful appeal to stop gun violence, calling the current situation a "pandemic of weapons, large and small." He referred to both the repeated gun attacks in the United States and the armed conflicts taking place in various countries around the world.
Pope Leo XIV, who is also the first American Pope in history, originally from Chicago, addressed the faithful in English as he prayed for the victims of the recent attack in the US state of Minnesota, where two children lost their lives and several others were seriously injured.
“Our prayers are with the victims of this tragic attack, which occurred during a mass at a school in Minnesota,” he said, according to The Guardian. “We include in our prayers all the innocent children who are killed and injured every day around the world. Let us pray that God will stop the pandemic of guns, big and small, that is infecting our world.”
The tragic incident occurred on Wednesday at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, where two children, Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, were killed and 18 others were injured. The gunman fired 116 shots through the stained glass windows of the church before killing himself.
The attack has brought gun control back to the forefront of the debate in the US. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called for concrete and legal action to curb the violence, saying the “prayers and thoughts” often used by Republican officials after such events are no longer enough. The US remains the country with the highest number of mass shootings in the world.
At the same time, Pope Leo XIV called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, inviting the warring parties to seriously engage in dialogue.
“The time has come for those responsible to abandon the logic of weapons and choose the path of negotiations and peace, with the support of the international community,” he stressed. “The voice of weapons must be silenced, while the voice of brotherhood and justice must be raised.”
Even his predecessor, Pope Francis, had spoken out strongly against the arms industry, describing arms manufacturers as "merchants of death."
