Eighty religious leaders and some 300 other prominent figures from around the world will join Pope Leo XIV in Assisi, Italy, Oct. 25–27 and issue a new appeal for peace. This was announced at the Vatican today by Marco Impagliazzo, leader of the Sant’ Egidio Community. The last day of the gathering will be 40 years after Pope John Paul II led an interreligious prayer for peace in Assisi, the birthplace of Saint Francis.

That 1986 convocation by John Paul II took place just more than nine months before the treaty banning intermediate nuclear weapons, known as the 1987 INF Treaty, was signed by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, ending the threat of nuclear war in Europe. Today, when the INF Treaty has been cast aside and a nuclear World War III is threatening, an appeal has been sent to Pope Leo by the Schiller Institute and 150 religious and other leading figures, asking that he try to intervene to bring the Presidents of China, the United States, and Russia together to discuss peace and nuclear disarmament.

The three-day meeting in Assisi, with the banner of “Dismarmed and Disarming Peace,” will feature forums on migration, poverty, the situation of young people, and the dangers of nuclear war.