Vatican City, May 12 (EFE).— Pope Leo XIV on Monday urged journalists to embrace a “communication of peace,” calling on them to “disarm words” to help disarm the world.
“Let us disarm words, and we will help disarm the Earth,” the pope said in his first public audience since his election, addressing journalists who covered the conclave that brought him to the papacy.
“We must say no to the war of words and images. We must reject the paradigm of war.”
In keeping with a tradition begun by Pope Francis, the first American pontiff gathered several thousand of the press in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican.
“We live in difficult times to navigate and recount, times that challenge all of us and from which we must not escape,” he said.
The pope also expressed the Church’s solidarity with journalists imprisoned for seeking and reporting the truth.
He called for their release, saying he was thinking especially of those who report on war “even at the cost of their lives.”
“The suffering of these imprisoned journalists challenges the conscience of nations and the international community,” he said, urging the world “to safeguard the precious gift of free speech and freedom of the press.”
He stressed that this era calls on everyone, regardless of their role or function, “never to give in to mediocrity.”
“What is needed is not a noisy and muscular communication, but one capable of listening, of amplifying the voices of the weak and voiceless,” Leo XIV said.
“Disarmed and disarming communication allows us to share a different vision of the world and to act in ways consistent with human dignity,” he added.
“You are on the front lines narrating conflicts and hopes for peace, situations of injustice and poverty, and the silent work of many for a better world,” he said. “That is why I ask you to choose, with conscience and courage, the path of a communication of peace.”
There could be “no communication or journalism detached from time and history,” he said, quoting Saint Augustine, his spiritual predecessor as an Augustinian, who said, “Let us live well, and the times will be good. We are the times.”
Met with thunderous applause throughout his address, the pope warned that one of today’s greatest challenges is escaping a modern-day “Tower of Babel,” a “confusion of languages without love, often ideological or biased.”
“That’s why the words you choose and the style you adopt matter,” he said. “Communication is not just about transmitting information. It’s about shaping culture and creating human and digital environments that foster dialogue and engagement.”
He concluded by urging caution and ethical responsibility amid rapid technological change and the rise of artificial intelligence, which, he said, “holds immense potential but requires discernment so that these tools serve the common good and benefit all of humanity.”
Pope Leo XIV entered the Paul VI Hall to a standing ovation and joked that he hoped the applause would still be there at the end of his speech. EFE
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