‘Seek peace and care for creation,’ Pope urges in message for upcoming world day of prayer
August 20, 2026
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” is the theme of Pope Leo XIV’s Message for the 11th World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, released by the Vatican today.
“The prophet Isaiah spoke of a time when nations ‘shall beat their swords into plowshares,’“ (Is 2:4), transforming what destroys life into what sustains it,” Pope Leo wrote in the message, dated August 15. “But today, we too often witness the very opposite, as efforts continue to be directed toward violence and war.”
“The wounds of war and the degradation of the earth,” the Pope continued, “are profoundly linked to the condition of the human heart. The conflicts that torment humanity are in many ways the outward expression of interior discord and division. When the heart is distorted, relationships suffer, and the structures we build begin to reflect that disorder.”
This situation, the Pope said, calls for conversion:
The prophetic call to “beat swords into plowshares” (Is 2:4) is therefore not only a vision for nations, but a call to each person. It invites us to transform harm into life. Yet this transformation cannot be achieved through external change alone. It requires, through cooperating with God’s grace, a deeper personal and collective conversion—a returning to God, who will reorder our desires, heal our wounds and help us grow in virtue.
Without this inner transformation, peace will remain fragile and short-lived. But where hearts are renewed, new possibilities begin to open. What has been used for destruction can be redirected toward life, toward the care of the poor, the nourishment of the hungry, and the safeguarding of creation. This is the path of authentic ecological conversion, where the effects of our encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in our relationship with the world around us. Peace, then, begins in the heart and flows outward to our relationships, communities and the broader world.
Pope Leo concluded:
Dear brothers and sisters, the path before us is clear, though it is not easy. We are called to allow our hearts to be renewed, so that we might seek peace and care for creation. Scripture tells us to guard our hearts, for everything we do flows from them (cf. Prov 4:23). If we take up this task with humility and faith, we will become collaborators in God’s work of renewal. We will move, slowly but surely, from desert to garden, from division to communion, and from violence to peace.
May the Lord grant us the courage to walk along this path, so that in our time, swords may indeed be beaten into plowshares, and the promise of the Gospel may take deeper root in our world, and the peace of Christ may reign over all of creation.
The Church commemorates the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation on September 1 (background). In establishing the day in 2015, Pope Francis acknowledged his debt to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which has observed September 1, the beginning of its liturgical year, as a similar day of prayer since 1989.
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