Pope Leo’s Message for the World Day of Prayer for Care of Creation
1st September
by Sr Katrina Alton: National Chaplain to Pax Christi England & Wales
For the 2026 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Pope Leo XIV has chosen the theme: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4)
The prophet Isaiah is not describing a world with fewer weapons, he is imagining a world that has abolished the logic of warfare and militarism from our world, our minds, and our hearts. Instruments designed by us, used by us, are transformed by us, to bring life, not death.
Pope Leo connects this prophetic vision directly with the ecological crisis. “These phenomena,” he writes of war and ecological destruction, “are not unrelated; they are a single plea for healing and peace arising from a wounded world.”
This matters, because we cannot separate the destruction of the Earth from the systems of violence that devastate it. War destroys ecosystems, contaminates air and water, drives people from their homes and leaves “social and ecological destruction that endures for generations.” Militarism and ecological violence are fed by the same appetite for power, extraction, and greed.
So, what would it mean to beat swords into ploughshares today?
It would mean asking what happens when we disarm the war economy itself. Pope Leo invites us to imagine precisely this transformation: “What has been used for destruction can be redirected toward life, toward the care of the poor, the nourishment of the hungry, and the safeguarding of creation.”
Systemic change must be accompanied by a disarming of the heart. War, says Pope Leo, is “rooted in distorted desires and the misuse of human freedom and power” and is “a counter-witness to the Gospel of peace.”
This is where Gospel nonviolence becomes radically challenging. Jesus does not simply ask us to manage violence more efficiently. He calls us to another way: love our enemies, break the cycles of violence, speak truth to power, forgive, reconcile, and to stand in solidarity with those who suffer.
The “sword” must be disarmed in our weapons systems, our economies, our politics—and in our own hearts too.
Pope Leo insists that “the true tools for building peace” are not weapons, but “truth, dialogue, patience, goodness, justice, mercy, understanding, care and love.” These are not sentimental virtues, but effective nonviolent tools for social change.
The “ploughshare” becomes an image of what human beings are capable of when our creativity is liberated from destruction: feeding rather than bombing; healing rather than wounding; educating rather than indoctrinating; restoring rather than extracting; reconciling rather than occupying.
This is the conversion at the heart of ecological discipleship. Care for creation means confronting the forces that destroy creation. Peace means confronting the systems that make violence profitable.
On 1st September, let us join Pope Leo in praying for a disarming of our hearts and our world. Let us renew our commitment to care for creation by following the way of the nonviolent Jesus.
May we become people who turn swords into ploughshares, bombs into bread, and the machinery of death into the patient, courageous work of healing creation and building a just peace.
As Pope Leo concludes: “May the Lord grant us the courage to walk along this path.”