VATICAN CITY (RNS) – During his first Easter address on Sunday, Pope Leo XIV made an impassioned global appeal to end wars and embrace dialogue, following a series of celebrations leading up to Easter in which the pope emphasized the theme of peace.

“Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!” Leo said in his Urbi et Orbi address, Latin for “to the city and to the world,” as 50,000 gathered in the square beneath him, according to Vatican News.

Recent popes have made the traditional Easter address an occasion to call out injustices and conflict in the world. Leo’s Holy Week celebrations, including a prayer vigil on Saturday to “make heard the cry for peace that springs from our hearts,” kept that focus — with added urgency as conflict escalates in the Middle East.

Though he did not name specific conflicts in his Sunday address, Leo underlined Jesus’ embrace of nonviolence, in contrast to world leaders — including in the United States — who have recently invoked Christianity to justify the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran, which has spilled into the wider region.

“The power with which Christ rose is entirely nonviolent,” the pope said. “This is the true strength that brings peace to humanity because it fosters respectful relationships at every level: among individuals, families, social groups and nations.”

Leo didn’t only appeal to those in power, but to everyone. He lamented a world that is “growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent” — not just to the “hatred and division” but also the “economic and social consequences they produce.”

“We are all afraid of death, and out of fear we turn away, preferring not to look,” he said. “We cannot continue to be indifferent! And we cannot resign ourselves to evil!”

In his homily during the solemn ceremony in St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday, the pope pointed to Christ’s resurrection as the solution to “the power of death,” that threatens humanity from within and without. He spoke of how sins, loneliness, worries and resentment risk suffocating individuals from within — while from the outside, death looms “in injustices, in partisan selfishness, in the oppression of the poor, in the lack of attention given to the most vulnerable.” 

“We see it in violence, in the wounds of the world, in the cry of pain that rises from every corner because of the abuses that crush the weakest among us, because of the idolatry of profit that plunders the earth’s resources, because of the violence of war that kills and destroys,” Leo said.

The pope called for a prayer vigil for peace on April 11 to be held in St. Peter’s Basilica. “On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that make us feel powerless in the face of evil,” he said.

The Easter celebration and the papal address were the culmination of a week of liturgies and ceremonies in which the pope repeatedly spoke of peace. On Tuesday, Leo also called on U.S. President Donald Trump to look for an “off-ramp” to end the conflict in Iran, answering questions from journalists near his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.

During the Via Crucis celebration, where Leo personally carried the cross to the 14 stations of the Way of the Cross in Rome’s Coliseum on Friday, the meditations were written by the former Custodian of the Holy Land, the Rev. Francesco Patton. The reflections criticized authoritarian regimes and said those who have power and wage war “will have to answer to God.”

On Friday, Leo also called Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, urging peace and a ceasefire while also offering humanitarian aid to the countries affected by war. During the Vigil Mass on Saturday in St. Peter’s Basilica, a dramatic liturgy marking when Christ rose from the dead, the pope called on people not to be “paralyzed” by wars and injustices and instead become agents of peace.