Leo XIV Urges Faith Leaders to Be Bridges for Life
At Buenos Aires’ Palacio San Martín, the Pope links baptismal unity and Nostra aetate to defending life from conception and to a silence that fosters listening.
On November 9, 2026, during his apostolic journey to Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru, Pope Leo XIV met leaders of Christian communities and other religious traditions at the Palacio San Martín in Buenos Aires, the ceremonial seat of Argentina’s Foreign Ministry. He arrived at 5:40 p.m. local time and was welcomed by Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno, Archbishop Marcelo Daniel Colombo, president of the Argentine Episcopal Conference, and Archbishop Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva of Buenos Aires. The encounter took place in the Salón Libertador.
Bishop Ángel José Macín of Reconquista, president of the Episcopal Commission for Ecumenism and Relations with Judaism, Islam and Other Religions, opened the gathering by recalling Argentina’s tradition of peaceful coexistence. He said building bridges of unity is the task to which every believer is called, and urged that this experience become a culture of encounter in society, with a peace that is disarmed and disarming, humble and persevering.
Guardians of Dignity and Hope
Pope Leo XIV described Argentina as a melting pot of races, cultures, and religions, and said religions there were never a reason for division, but a meeting point and a commitment to society. He echoed St. John Paul II’s earlier image of an admirable symbiosis with local traditions. As Successor of Peter, he reaffirmed baptismal unity with other Christians, the spiritual bond between the Church and the people of Israel, and respect for what is holy and true in other traditions, citing the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra aetate.
He said prayer, in every religion, expresses what we are before God, and that in the digital age silence helps overcome distractions and recover the value of listening. Developing three themes, he presented religions as guardians of human dignity, insisting that life must be defended from conception to its natural end, especially when threatened by misery and violence; as expressions of freedom, warning not to destroy with our hands the garden the Creator has entrusted to us, and naming the idols of domination, vainglory, and war, since the true name of God’s power is love, a love that has no end; and as places to cultivate hope, affirming that the future is the time of faith and that religion—religare—connects people.
Dialogue Without Relativism
The Pope insisted that interreligious dialogue implies neither relativism nor syncretism. He recalled St. John Paul II’s Assisi address of January 24, 2002, that prayer leads not to opposition and still less to contempt for the other, but rather to a constructive dialogue. He invited those present to adopt Pope Francis’s prayer from Fratelli tutti for a world without hunger, without poverty, without violence, without wars.
Leo XIV then lit a candle and the assembly observed a minute of silence for peace, followed by a group photograph in the courtyard. Afterward he left for the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity for Vespers with the Argentine bishops.