The death of Pope Francis marks the end of a papacy that, while not without its controversies, consistently offered a measured and persistent call for peace in an age when many leaders have grown comfortable with the language of war.
At Action on Armed Violence, we document the human cost of explosive weapons: the civilians killed in marketplaces and mosques, the children maimed by airstrikes, the homes reduced to rubble by artillery fire. In this grim landscape, moral clarity can be hard to come by. But Francis, more than most, understood the stakes and gave the clarity that is much needed.
Repeatedly, he spoke out against the global arms trade, calling it a business of “death” and lamenting how it fuels conflicts in places already ravaged by instability.
He criticised what he saw as the hypocrisy of leaders who speak of peace while profiting from weapons. “We are used to wars,” he said in one address. “It’s hard to believe in peace.”
And yet, he kept believing, right up the end. As it has been reported: “”almost every night…even during his hospitalization, Pope Francis made a daily phone call to the only Catholic parish in the Gaza Strip to check on their safety and offer words of prayer…His last public act…was to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.”
He also called for ceasefires in Sudan, peace in Ukraine, and wider reconciliation in the Holy Land.
Only hours before his death, in his final Easter address, he warned that “no one is saved alone,” urging an end to “the logic of weapons and rearming.” It was a line that, in a different voice, might have sounded like theatre. But coming from Francis, it felt hard-won and genuines. It came from someone who had seen too much suffering to speak in anything but plain truths.
Of course, his critics remain. The Church’s handling of abuse scandals, its financial corruption, its slow pace of reform – all remain valid points of debate. But it is also true that few world leaders today speak with any consistency about peace. Fewer still speak about disarmament. And almost none speak of forgiveness.
Francis did. And he did so not in the abstract, but in response to real, contemporary horrors: the bombing of civilian homes, the starvation of children in besieged cities, the countless ways violence creeps into daily life.
His was not a perfect record. But it was a rare one.
In the face of political leaders who justify war as inevitable, or necessary, or even righteous, Pope Francis chose another path. One grounded in compassion. One shaped by his experiences in the barrios of Buenos Aires, and informed by a quiet conviction that peace is not naïve – but necessary.
In a time of growing militarism, his death leaves a silence we would do well to notice. Not because he offered hollow words, but because he reminded us that another way is possible. That peace should not be treated as the exception. And that those who bear the brunt of armed violence are too often forgotten in the speeches of men in suits.
He remembered them.
That, in the end, may be his greatest legacy.
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