At the Palm Sunday service yesterday, Pope Leo XIV stood before tens of thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square on and said that God refuses to hear the prayers of those who wage war.
“Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” Leo said during his Palm sermon, the liturgy that opens Holy Week. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
The pope quoted the prophet Isaiah: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.”
He built his entire sermon around a single point: Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, not a war horse, fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah that the Messiah would “cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem” and “command peace to the nations.”
When one of his own disciples drew a sword in Gethsemane, Jesus told him: “Put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”
The pointed homily required no interpretation. Three days earlier, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood at a Pentagon prayer service and asked God to sanction “overwhelming violence” against “those who deserve no mercy” — carrying a Bible stamped with “Deus Vult,” the Crusader battle cry that means "God wills it." Leo’s invocation of Isaiah landed as a direct rebuke: "God won't bless your bombs, and he will not bless your slaughter."
Look at these cosplay Crusaders:
