HOPE FOR PEACE FROM USA U.S. Catholic: “Harmonious community”: The Augustinian charism shaping Pope Leo XIV’s first words
- Yona Tukuser
- May 12
- 2 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
HOPE FOR PEACE FROM VATICAN 12.05.2025
Pope Leo’s messages of community, peace, renewal, and discipleship reveal the fruits of his formation in the ancient Augustinian order.
The first word: Peace
“Peace be with you all!” Pope Leo XIV’s first words on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica were the same words with which Jesus greets the scared disciples in the upper room in the Gospel of John (20:19).
The new pope has referenced John’s gospel three more times: Once in his homily at his first Mass on Friday, and three more times in his meeting with the cardinals on Saturday.
In this meeting, he repeated the greeting again—“Peace be with you!”—and expounded on what exactly he meant by peace. “This is the peace of the Risen Christ, a disarmed peace,” the 69-year-old pontiff said. “A disarming, humble and persevering peace. It comes from God, God who loves us all unconditionally.”
His message of peace was well-chosen. Many commentators were struck by his repetition of peace.
In his first Urbi et Orbi address, Pope Leo also called for “dialogue” three times and “walking together” twice.
“I know I can rely on each and every one of you to walk with me as we continue as a church, as a community of friends of Jesus, as believers, to announce the good news,” he said at his first Mass on Friday.
“When Pope Francis died, I thought we had lost our strongest voice for peace,” Yona Tukuser says. Tukuser, a 39-year-old artist from the Odessa region of Ukraine, has been holding a sign reading “Hope for Peace” in St. Peter’s Square since April 25.
She says she is moved when passersby read her sign and repeat the words, “hope for peace,” in a variety of different languages. “I realized it is a collective prayer,” she says.
She was excited when she heard Pope Leo XIV’s first words in St. Peter’s Square—“His first word was peace!” she says. Again, in his first Regina Caeli (noon Angelus) blessing on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday afternoon, he called the violence in Ukraine, India-Pakistan, and Gaza a “third world war in pieces,” as Francis did. “Never again war!” he pleaded, emphatically.
His words moved Tukuser. But what has struck her even more has been his emphasis on dialogue and bridge-building. “Dialogue is the way to peace,” she says.
Dialogue has been a constant message of this papacy. “I think it is important that all of us learn more and more to listen, to enter into dialogue,” he said during his Sunday homily in the grotto of St. Peter’s Basilica. He mirrored what the final synod document named as the two-part structure of the synod: spiritual renewal and then structural reform. He emphasized that the first dialogue is with God.
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