Pope’s ‘State of the World’ address calls for ‘diplomacy of hope’

January 09, 2025

In a January 9 address to the diplomats accredited to the Holy See— his annual “State of the World” address— Pope Francis called for a “diplomacy of hope,” to be realized during the Jubilee Year of Hope in 2025.

At the start of his address, the Pope said that the Jubilee “is meant to help us step back from the increasingly frenzied pace of daily life in order to be refreshed and nourished by what is truly essential.” In keeping with the tradition of the papal speech to the Vatican diplomatic corps, his 5,000-word message surveyed the world’s problems and trouble spots, and offered an alternative vision: the diplomacy of hope, which he extended to include a “diplomacy of truth” and a “diplomacy of forgiveness.”

Pope Francis actually read only a few paragraphs of his prepared text. Explaining that he was suffering from “a bit of a cold,” the Pope handed the text over to Msgr. Filippo Ciampanelli, the undersecretary of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches, who read the address aloud. (See today’s separate CWN headline.)

Thanks and regrets

The Pope opened his remarks by thanking George Poulides, the ambassador from Cyprus, who— in his capacity as dean of the Vatican diplomatic corps— offered the group’s best wishes to the Pontiff.

The Pope went on to thank “the Italian authorities, national and local,” who have been involved in planning and preparations for the Jubilee Year. And he saluted “the people of Rome, known for their hospitality,” for their patience in dealing with the inconveniences caused by those preparations and by the influx of Jubilee pilgrims.

Then, looking back across the past year, the Pope remarked:

Sadly, we begin this year as the world finds itself rent by numerous conflicts, large and small, more or less known, but also by the resumption of heinous acts of terror, such as those that recently occurred in Magdeburg in Germany and in New Orleans in the United States.

The Pontiff lamented that we live in “increasingly polarized societies marked by a general sense of fear and distrust of others and of the future, which is aggravated by the continuous creation and spread of fake news, which not only distorts facts but also perceptions.” These distortions, he argued, fuel the climate of polarization, and thus lead to incidents such as the attempted assassinations of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico in May and American president-elect Donald Trump in July. Pope Francis insisted on the need to “overcome the logic of confrontation and embrace instead the logic of encounter.

A litany of conflicts

”War is always a failure,” the Pope said, reiterating a theme that he has sounded frequently. He repeated his oft-expressed demand for an end to the warfare in Ukraine and in the Holy Land, calling special attention to the “shameful” humanitarian suffering of the people in Gaza.

In a survey of world conflicts, Pope Francis also called attention to the violence in Sudan, Mozambique, Myanmar, Venezuela, Bolivia, Haiti, and Nicaragua. Without going into details about these conflicts, he expressed his home that “this Jubilee year will be a favorable moment in which the international community will take active steps to ensure that inviolable human rights are not sacrificed to military needs.”

The Pontiff devoted greater attention to the situation in Syria, offering a cautiously optimistic note that the country “after years of war and devastation, seems to be pursuing a path of stability.” He voiced the hope that both Syria and its neighbor, Lebanon, could achieve stability in a climate of peaceful coexistence after long years of conflict.

Speaking more generally the Pope said that “there can be no true peace without the guarantee of religious freedom”— a point that he applied particularly to the church-state conflict in Nicaragua. He deplored “the growing expressions of anti-Semitism” around the world as well.

Wealth, freedom, and debt

Along with political conflicts, Pope Francis also told the assembled ambassadors that world leaders should be mindful of social and economic problems. “More than ever before,” he observed, “humanity has come to know progress, development and wealth, yet perhaps never before has it found itself so lonely and lost, even at times preferring pets to children.”

Among other reasons for concern, the Pontiff cited:

• the development of artificial intelligence, which “raises broader concerns about intellectual property rights;”
• the unilateral re-interpretation of international accords “in order to advance divisive ideologies;”
• the “cancel culture,” the exploitation of the weak and vulnerable, and the promotion of an alleged “right to abortion;”
• the “horrific slavery of drug addiction, which affects young people in particular; and
• the exploitation of migrants and refugees.

Pope Francis devoted special attention to the scourge of human trafficking. He argued that although slavery has been banned legal, “many forms of slavery still exist.” He mentioned “the seldom acknowledged but widely practiced form of slavery that involves labor,” and condemned the exploitation of workers— particular child laborers.

”I find it greatly disheartening to see that migration is still shrouded in a dark cloud of mistrust,” the Pope said. He urged world leaders to investigate “the root causes of displacement.” And to ease the poverty that impels many people to migrate, he repeated his call for “the wealthier nations to forgive the debts of countries that will never be able to repay them.”

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