“Should the human species continue to populate the Earth? “. This is the radical question raised by Leo XIV in the preface made public this Tuesday, July 21, to his latest book Disarmed and Disarming. Peace is a gift. Published in Italian by the Vatican Publishing House – the Vatican’s publishing house – the work, edited by journalist Alessandro Banfi, is an anthology of the Pope’s main speeches, since his election, on the theme of peace.
His tone is severe. Leo The pope hopes that the truth will “impose itself” in the face of warlike logic, affirming in particular that “it is not atomic weapons that generate peace, but disarmament”. Faced with the arms race which “terrifies”, he still cites unusual references from the pontifical pen, such as the singer-songwriter Bob Dylan addressing the atomic bomb: “I hate you because it was man who created you, and man owns you, and man manipulates you” (Go Away You Bomb, 1963).
A “choice made in full conscience”
Quoting Pius XI, the American-Peruvian pope believes that in these “difficult” times, “no one is allowed to be mediocre”. He gives as a model the Congolese Floribert Bwana Chui, killed in 2007 for having resisted an attempted corruption, the former mayor of Florence Giorgio La Pira and the American Catholic activist Dorothy Day. But for the Pope, peace is also embodied by “unsung protagonists who followed their conscience”.
On this subject, Peter’s successor refers to the story of Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov (1939-2017), who on September 26, 1983 helped “to avoid a possible world atomic war”. When the radars of the bunker near Moscow, where Stanislav Petrov was on duty, reported the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles from the United States towards the Soviet Union, the officer, “disobeying orders, decided not to report this alleged attack.” It was “a choice made in full conscience, knowing that this simple gesture could have caused millions of deaths,” greets the Pope in his preface.
“Peace begins with me”
History will prove Stanislav Petrov right since it was in reality an error in the Soviet satellite positioning system, recalls Leo XIV. Denouncing the specter of a “terrible” world where machines “decide to bomb defenseless people”, he reaffirms that “the conscience of a single man can be worth the entire world”. Finally urging us to resist the temptation of “despair”, he encourages everyone to make peace “the cause of their life”. “Peace begins with me”, he insists before warning: “we cannot ask for peace from the powerful of this world, if we do not start by experiencing it ourselves”.
