OPEN LETTER: Leo XIV, you quote Benedict XV, so name the aggressor as he named Belgium

A diplomat’s word

Metz, Monday

Holy Father, on September 28 in Metz, you asked Europe to be ready to sacrifice certain positions for the higher good of peace. You named neither the aggressor nor the country under attack.

This letter asks you to name them. Before any concession.

Positions. The word sounds fine in a conference hall.

It sounds like a chair pushed back. A folder closed. A line struck from a draft communiqué.

A position, over there

Over there, a position is nothing abstract.

In a trench, it is mud clinging to boots and a parapet rebuilt every night, bare-handed when the shovel runs out.

In an occupied town, it is a key kept deep in a pocket. It no longer opens anything. People touch it anyway.

You are the first pope to come from the United States. You spoke in French, in Schuman’s city. Every word had been weighed.

I write to you with respect. I also write because this word, in your mouth, carries further than in a minister’s.

A position, over there, has an address.

The passage at Metz

The Robert Schuman Convention Center

You spoke at the Robert Schuman Convention Center, in the Moselle, the land where this founding father of Europe is buried.

The French presidency had invited all 27 heads of state of the Union, The National reports. Few came: the Prince of Monaco, the Grand Duke and the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, a German minister-president.

Your text, published by the Holy See, says that war has resurfaced in Europe, a new useless massacre, in the words you borrowed, that claims countless civilian victims every day.

Then comes the sentence. Patient dialogue. Courage in negotiation. Positions to sacrifice.

Twenty-seven invitations. A handful in the room.

The speech drew a standing ovation, according to Reuters.

Two missing names

I read it again. Not once the word Russia. Not once the word Ukraine.

The Kyiv Independent noted it that same evening: you named neither one, and you did not say what peace would look like.

Beside you, Emmanuel Macron spoke of Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to Reuters. The president of a secular republic said the name.

Victims, yes. Countless, yes. Every day, yes.

A massacre with no author.

The massacre has an author. The speech left it out.

Footnote 8

Your own reference

The phrase about a useless massacre is not yours. You say so yourself.

Footnote 8 of your speech points to Benedict XV and his letter to the heads of the belligerent peoples, dated August 1, 1917.

I opened it. It is on the Holy See’s website, in French.

In it, Benedict XV announces that he no longer wants to stay within general terms. He wants to come, he writes, to proposals that are more concrete and practical.

Three painful years, he writes. A war extended even into the air, over defenseless cities. And a pope who decides to leave the general behind.

August 1, 1917

In 1917, Benedict XV named Belgium.

He named Germany, from which he demanded the total evacuation of Belgium, with a guarantee of its full independence.

He named the French territory to be evacuated. He named the German colonies to be returned. He named Armenia, the Balkan states, the former Kingdom of Poland.

He even set a condition. No peace without the mutual restitution of the territories then occupied.

Occupied. The word is in the letter your footnote cites. It is not in your text.

Your footnote names what your speech leaves unsaid.

Impartial and precise

The first pledge of 1917

Some will answer that a pope does not take sides. Benedict XV said so too.

His letter opens with three resolutions. The first: to keep perfect impartiality toward all the belligerents.

He condemned no one. He proposed an entire and reciprocal waiver of war costs. He wrote that the honor of arms was safe on either side.

He was impartial. He named the occupier anyway.

He was no less a pope for it. No less the common father, as he called himself. He was simply more precise.

What Metz cut out

You kept his impartiality. You kept his phrase about a useless massacre. You kept his appeal. You left Belgium at the bottom of the page.

Put plainly: 1917 named the occupied and the occupier. 2026 speaks of certain positions.

I stand with the Ukrainians who are being asked to give ground. Against a call for concessions that names no one. Because on September 28 you quoted a letter that named the occupier, and you did not follow it that far.

Impartial does not mean silent.

141 votes

New York, March 2, 2022

The word exists. The world has already written it.

On March 2, 2022, the UN General Assembly deplored, in the strongest terms, the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine.

141 states voted in favor. 5 against: Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, Russia, Syria. 35 abstentions.

The Assembly demanded that Moscow immediately cease its unlawful use of force against Ukraine and withdraw its troops.

It even deplored the involvement of Belarus. It named the aggressor, and the neighbor drawn in.

Not a conclave. Not an encyclical. A recorded vote, in a hall in New York.

A word already voted

Aggression. The word is not an insult. It is a legal finding. Voted, dated, published.

I am not asking you to go further than those 141 states. I am asking you to go as far.

And yet, at Metz, the word did not come.

One hundred forty-one states found the word.

Imperialist in nature

Cardinal Prevost

I now owe you what complicates this letter. I am publishing it anyway.

You have not always kept the name back. Before your election, you called the Russian invasion “imperialist in nature,” the Kyiv Independent recalls. Moscow, you said, was seeking to conquer Ukrainian territory for power.

Since your election in May 2025, you have often voiced your solidarity with Ukrainians. You have called for a “just and lasting peace.”

What Kyiv acknowledges

In July, your foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, went to Kyiv, to the site of a Russian missile strike that cost more than 20 lives, children among them.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, thanked him for the Vatican’s solidarity with the Ukrainian people and for its humanitarian aid.

And Kyiv itself is negotiating positions. A Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent that Ukraine would stop striking Russian refineries if Moscow also agrees to an energy truce.

That is not nothing. It is a great deal, for a diplomacy that has only its word.

True. You are not discovering who the aggressor is. You named him yourself, before the conclave. And Kyiv says it is ready to give ground if the other side gives too.

You knew it. You said it. Say it again.

The illusion of rearmament

€6.5 billion in Paris

You also warned Europe against the illusion of rearmament.

You were speaking beside Emmanuel Macron, who this summer approved a €6.5 billion increase in the defense budget over two years, The National reports.

According to Reuters, European military spending in 2025 saw its sharpest rise since the end of the Cold War, under pressure from Donald Trump and in the face of Russian assertiveness.

On this point, Washington was right to push. A Europe that pays for its own defense is a win for Trump, and I call it that.

You wrote it yourself, a few lines earlier: the search for peace must not be confused with naive pacifism.

In other words, a peace that does not look at who is striking.

The same Monday, in Kyiv

You cited your message of January 1, 2026: too many rulers justify their military spending by the danger that others pose.

That same Monday, in broad daylight, Russian drones struck central Kyiv, where the National Academy of Sciences caught fire. One woman died and 24 people were wounded, three of them children, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

And yet the danger that others pose had, that day, an engine and a flight path.

In a city under alert, people learn to know an engine by its sound. A buzz like a lawnmower, very high up. Then nothing.

Budgets go up. So do the drones.

A balanced position

Moscow, August 25

On August 25, Archbishop Gallagher met Sergey Lavrov in Moscow. The first face-to-face talks between the Holy See and Moscow since the full-scale invasion, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Archbishop Gallagher called for an end to the war. He acknowledged “substantial differences.”

He said each day of war “creates new victims.”

The visit was to last until August 28, with a meeting planned on the 26th with Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser.

Lavrov’s compliment

Lavrov, for his part, thanked the Vatican for its “balanced position.”

Position. The same word. From the foreign minister of a state that occupies a neighboring country.

Then he repeated the “root causes” of the war, the argument Moscow uses to refuse a ceasefire, the Kyiv Independent writes.

When the aggressor congratulates you on being balanced…

A compliment from Lavrov is not a medal.

The children’s channel

Children taken, children brought home

You could answer me this, and the argument is serious.

The Vatican has played a mediating role in returning Ukrainian children forcibly taken by Russia, the Kyiv Independent writes. On August 25, Archbishop Gallagher and Lavrov agreed to cooperate on humanitarian issues, including help for children affected by the war.

Naming the aggressor could mean closing that channel. One child brought home is worth more than one accurate sentence.

A diplomat knows that. So does a father.

The channel exists. I do not look down on it. Every child brought home is a victory no one photographs.

I take the argument whole. It gives me pause.

The table Lavrov refused in May

And yet neutrality did not buy the table.

You offered the Vatican as a venue for talks. In May, Lavrov refused: a Catholic seat would not suit two predominantly Orthodox countries, he said.

And in 1917, Benedict XV named the occupier without ceasing to be, by his own pledge, impartial toward all.

Naming did not close the door in 1917. Silence did not open the table in May.

Neutrality did not buy the table.

A fifth of Ukraine

What Reuters measures

Reuters writes, in its dispatch on your speech, that the invasion Russia launched in 2022 has seized a fifth of Ukraine.

A fifth. That is where the positions are.

Neither Moscow nor Kyiv shows any willingness to give up ground, the agency adds. So this fifth is what we are talking about when we talk about sacrifice.

What giving ground means

A position, now, is no longer a diplomat’s word. It is a fifth of a country, with the living inside it.

Families living under an authority they did not choose. Houses where people speak low. Doors no one opens at the first knock anymore.

Relatives on the other side of the line, called when the signal gets through. A voice that crackles, then cuts out.

A truck passing in the night. The windowpane rattling in its frame.

And the dead. You named them yourself: countless civilian victims, every day. More than 20 in the single strike Archbishop Gallagher went to see in July.

They will give up nothing. They have already given up everything.

I write this slowly.

Giving up a fifth without saying who took it tells the people who live there that their occupier has no name.

To give ground without naming is to abandon twice.

A word once given

May 9, 1950

Your speech is tougher than it has been made out to be. It has to be read to the end.

In it, you cite the Schuman Declaration of May 9, 1950.

You write that Schuman had learned the importance of international law and the value of a word once given. You write that law between states cannot be imposed by force. You write that pacts must be kept, according to the old Latin principle. You write that international law is the best antidote to the will to dominate.

Every sentence is right. Every sentence is waiting for a subject.

Those who boast

Then you write that the value of a word once given is held in contempt. People boast instead, you add, of lies and deceit.

Who holds the given word in contempt? Who boasts?

You know. One hundred forty-one states wrote it down in 2022.

One name was missing for your finest page to become an address.

Every broken word carries a signature.

On the flight home

Russia and Ukraine, side by side

A few hours later, on the plane taking you back to Rome, you said both names, according to Reuters.

The Church, you said, has a responsibility to invite the leaders of Russia and of Ukraine to sit down and talk.

You spoke of wars that no longer make sense. You hoped for more spending on health and education, and less on weapons.

You denounced leaders who are starting, you said, to talk about nuclear weapons. Which ones? Again, no name.

Two chairs

Two names, at last. And yet, placed side by side, they say the same thing: two leaders, two wrongs, two chairs.

The Kremlin invaded. Kyiv is defending itself. It is not the same chair.

A negotiating table is never level. There is the one who walked into the other’s home, and the one counting what was taken.

You said a voice is needed for human dignity. That voice carries far: the Church counts 1.4 billion faithful, Reuters notes. That is why it has to be exact.

Two names side by side do not make two wrongs.

Five requests

What your own text already holds

Holy Father, here are my requests. None goes beyond your own text.

I ask you to name the aggressor, with the word 141 states voted in 2022.

I ask you to say which positions you had in mind, as Benedict XV said which ones.

I ask you to recall the condition he set: the restitution of occupied territories.

January 1

I ask you to keep the children’s channel open. Naming and bringing home do not exclude each other.

I ask you to do it, at the latest, in your next message for the World Day of Peace, on January 1.

Five requests. None requires a weapon. None costs a cent.

I am not asking you to bless a tank. I am not asking you to approve a budget. I am asking you for a subject for your verb.

You do not have to choose between peace and the name. Your predecessor of 1917 did not.

Naming costs a word. Silence costs positions.

Name them first

The young people of Metz

You ended your speech by speaking to the young, telling them not to submit to the logic of violence and oppression.

In Ukraine, twenty-year-olds are not submitting to it. They are holding positions.

I hesitated to write this letter. One does not write to the pope as to a minister. I was afraid of seeming to hold peace against the one who asks for it.

It is not peace I hold against you. It is the missing address.

Positions. I take up your word one last time. At Metz, it was a chair pushed back. Since then, it has become a fifth of a country.

The street with our name

And we who stand to applaud a peace with no name, which of those positions would we give up if it bore the name of our own street?

A position, over there, has an address. So does an aggressor.

One word is enough. You have said it before, ahead of the conclave.

Benedict XV named Belgium. Name Ukraine’s aggressor.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Holy See — Leo XIV’s speech on Europe’s roots, peace and unity, Metz, September 28, 2026
• Holy See — Benedict XV’s letter to the heads of the belligerent peoples, August 1, 1917
• United Nations — General Assembly deplores Russian aggression against Ukraine, 141 votes in favor, March 2, 2022

Secondary Sources:

• Kyiv Independent — Leo XIV urges concessions without naming Russia or Ukraine, September 28, 2026
• Kyiv Independent — Archbishop Gallagher meets Lavrov in Moscow, August 25, 2026
• The National — the pope in Metz beside Macron, leaders present and the defense budget, September 28, 2026