Pope Francis: Shepherd of Nonviolence

By Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, SDB.*

From the beginning to the end of his pontificate, Pope Francis centered the Church on the Gospel. While rules and institutions still mattered, he continually called us back to the fundamentals: mercy and forgiveness, solidarity with those at the margins, closeness to the poor, care for our common home—planet Earth—and the God who loves us tenderly and unconditionally.

This papal mission, placing the Gospel at the heart of Catholicism, explains why Pope Francis relentlessly proclaimed nonviolence: it was at the core of Jesus’ call to discipleship.

Nonviolence, a way of life

Building on the Church’s gradual reawakening to Jesus’ nonviolence since Vatican II, Pope Francis boldly taught that it lies at the heart of our Christian calling. He made this clear in his groundbreaking 2017 World Day of Peace Message, Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace, the most authoritative teaching on Gospel nonviolence since the early Church.

In this historic document, Pope Francis implored us to “make active nonviolence our way of life” and to live so that “charity and nonviolence govern how we treat each other as individuals, within society, and in international life.” He explained that “to be true followers of Jesus today also includes embracing His teaching about nonviolence” and concluded by declaring, “I pledge the assistance of the Church in every effort to build peace through active and creative nonviolence.”

A Lifelong Commitment to Gospel Nonviolence and Global Peace

Pope Francis emphasized the centrality of nonviolence because of his keen awareness of the trauma billions face daily in what he called “a third world war fought piecemeal.” He urged the world to confront this catastrophic suffering not with more violence but with a nonviolent revolution of healing and new life.

His clarity about Gospel nonviolence stemmed not only from lamenting global conflicts but also from his own experiences—family conflicts, struggles as a priest and provincial, the social turmoil of Argentina’s “dirty war,” and the challenges of his papacy. Throughout his life, he sought nonviolent solutions and called on the Church to do the same.

In his April 2023 “prayer intention for a nonviolent culture,” for example, His Holiness declared, “Let us make nonviolence a guide for our actions both in daily life and in international relations. And let us pray for a more widespread culture of nonviolence that will progress when countries and citizens alike resort less and less to the use of arms.”

In many other ways he illuminated this calling, such as when he told theologians in Naples, “I think of nonviolence as a perspective and way of understanding the world, to which theology must look as one of its constitutive elements,” or when he wrote in a letter to Cardinal Blase Cupich, “the consistent practice of nonviolence has broken barriers, bound wounds, healed nations.”

Advocating Nonviolence as the Path to Justice, Peace, and Human Dignity

Pope Francis ceaselessly taught that the answer to violence is not more violence. He sought to wean humanity from its tragic belief that violence is the solution. Rather than resolving our greatest challenges, violence often perpetuates and escalates them. He insisted that there must be another way—one that fosters justice, heals the earth, safeguards immigrants, and ends war. This “other way” was neither avoidance, appeasement, aggression, nor attack. It was a radically different way of being in the world, of working for peace, of building movements and systems, and of faithfully following Jesus: the way of creative and compassionate nonviolence.

At a time when rigorous research in the social sciences was discovering that nonviolent strategies were twice as effective as violent ones, Pope Francis called on the Church and the world to embrace this powerful and faithful path to being more fully human. This is why, in his 2023 book I Ask You in the Name of God: Ten Prayers for a Future of Hope, he echoed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., writing, “‘It is no longer a question of choosing between violence and nonviolence, but between nonviolence and non-existence.’ The choice is up to us.”

Pope Francis declared in Evangelii Gaudium, “Whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up.” Nowhere is this more important than in the revival of Gospel nonviolence in this time of crisis and opportunity. We are grateful for all the ways that our dear brother, Pope Francis, actively pointed us toward the nonviolent future to which God is calling us.

* Archbishop of Yangon (Myanmar) and member of the Advisory Council of the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence.