Pope Leo XIV today decried rising European military spending, saying it was a betrayal of diplomacy. He told university students in Rome: “Let us not call ‘defense’ a rearmament that increases tensions and insecurity, impoverishes investments in education and health, betrays trust in diplomacy, and enriches elites who care nothing for the common good.”
The Pope visited Rome’s Sapienza University and explained that he accepted “with great joy” the invitation, in part because of its commitment to educate the poor, the disabled, prisoners, and refugees. He noted Sapienza’s partnership with the Diocese of Rome to open a university humanitarian corridor in Gaza.
Addressing the youth, he said their concern over the great injustices in the world should transform them, explaining: “When the desire for truth becomes a search, our boldness in study bears witness to the hope of a new world.” He cited Saint Augustine, his own spiritual father, as someone who made serious mistakes as “a restless young man,” but one who never lost his passion for beauty and wisdom.
Today, “We must not hide from the fact that many young people are suffering.” There is “the pervasive lie of a distorted system that reduces people to numbers, exacerbating competitiveness and abandoning us to spirals of anxiety…. This spiritual malaise reminds us that we are not the sum of what we possess, nor matter randomly assembled in a mute cosmos.”
