Pope Leo XIV has called for nuclear disarmament in the foreword to a new book collecting his addresses and reflections on peace. The book, Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift, was published first in Italian with the English translation forthcoming and includes a previously unpublished text by the Pope.

The Pope said that it is “not atomic weapons that generate peace, but disarmament.”

“This truth, which seemed clear in past decades when we witnessed a nuclear de-escalation, has been obscured by a race to armament that today frightens and terrifies,” he said.

The Pope then quoted Bob Dylan’s 1963 song “Go Away You Bomb”. He wrote: “As singer-songwriter and poet Bob Dylan wrote, figuratively addressing the atomic bomb, in one of his poetic compositions: ‘I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned an’ man-handled’.”

“Today, the Church humbly brings a question to everyone’s attention: Must the human species continue to inhabit the Earth? The combination of the cyber domain and global rearmament impels one to seriously ask this question.”

Pope Leo decried the “third world war fought piecemeal”, citing the expression coined by Pope Francis to describe widespread global conflict, “without precedent since the end of the Second World War.”

“Peace is the great desire that stirs many hearts, but it is also often threatened, trampled upon and derided. Today, a good 103 states are involved in some way, in a war on Earth. Weapons boom and kill in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Sudan, in Myanmar, in Yemen, in Congo and in many other situations.”

He continued: “No one has the audacity to declare that they want war for the sake of war: even the powerful of the Earth know that every person aspires to justice and wishes to live in peace. Especially after the terrible consequences of the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the recourse to war is ever more an ‘adventure with no return’, as St John Paul II stressed.”

The collection was published by Vatican Publishing House and edited by Alessandro Banfi.