Pope urges religious leaders in France to preach peace as he recalls foundations of European unity

METZ, France (AP) — Pope Leo XIV urged religious leaders on Monday to preach messages of peace and unity as he wrapped up a visit to France by recalling the forces of dialogue that contributed to Europe’s post-World War II integration.

Leo traveled to the eastern city of Metz, near the border with Luxembourg and Germany, to preside over an interreligious meeting. It was held at a conference center named for Robert Schuman, a French Catholic statesman regarded as one of the founding fathers of European unity.

Leo decided to end his four-day visit to France in Metz to drive home his appeal for Europe to remember its tradition of dialogue to confront today’s challenges of war, migration and polarization.

Speaking to Jewish, Muslim, Protestant and Orthodox leaders gathered in the conference center, Leo cited Schuman’s example of promoting dialogue even among rivals in saying faith leaders had a shared responsibility to forge friendships across borders in the name of peace.

“Indeed, to invoke God’s name in order to justify violence or oppression is to profane that name,” he said. “Religious discourse must constantly call for the disarmament of hearts and words.”

Leo’s visit to the once staunchly Catholic and officially secular France has been marked by his appeal for Europe to remember its Christian heritage and apply it to today’s ethical and geopolitical challenges.

On Sunday at the Catholic shrine in Lourdes, he condemned legislation — recently approved in France — permitting medically assisted dying as “false compassion.” Huge crowds have met him at nearly every turn — 800,000 were at Leo’s Mass on Paris’ iconic Place de la Concorde — surprising even organizers.

On Monday morning, Leo's Air France charter received a military escort of two French fighter jets for the flight from Lourdes to Metz.

Later Monday in his final event in France, Leo was to celebrate Mass in the cathedral of St. Stephen in Metz. The cathedral is one of the greatest examples of French Gothic style, with its soaring vaults and stained-glass windows, some of which were designed by the 20th century Jewish artist Marc Chagall.

The colored glass has given the cathedral the nickname the “Lanterne du Bon Dieu,” or “The Good Lord’s Lantern.”

Schuman is best known for the Schuman Declaration of 1950, five years after the war ended. It proposed the creation of a European Coal and Steel Community to pool production between historic rivals France and Germany.

The idea, as Europe was emerging from the ruins of World War II, was guided by the belief that intertwined economic interests would make another war between them “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible.”

The coal and steel organization was the first among European institutions that were precursors to what eventually became the European Union .

Schuman, a resistance fighter imprisoned by the Nazis, was declared “venerable” in 2021, a step in the process toward possible sainthood.

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