ISTANBUL

In his first Easter Sunday message since assuming the papacy, Pope Leo XIV urged world leaders to choose peace and lay down their weapons instead of unleashing wars.

"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!" said the pontiff, speaking from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.

He said the world is growing accustomed to violence, with people resigned to it and becoming "indifferent" to the deaths of thousands of people, to the "repercussions of hatred and division that conflicts sow," and their economic and social consequences.

"There is an ever-increasing ‘’globalization of indifference’," Leo said. "We cannot continue to be indifferent! And we cannot resign ourselves to evil!"

"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 added.

Leo assumed the helm of the Catholic Church last May.