COMMON DREAMS POPE LEO
Submission + O’Rourke, Jr + Ask Pope Leo to Write
an Encyclical Dedicated to War Abolition
Ask Pope Leo to Write an Encyclical Dedicated to War
Abolition
Noble thoughts not requiring actions are harmless.
Pope Leo needs to tell everybody what to do.
Pope Leo in several speeches has asked the world to
abolish war but has given no specifics. What every
parent, military officer, teacher and supervisor learns
fast that to get results, your orders must be concise
and clear.
On Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, three Catholic cardinals —
Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of
Washington, D.C., and Joseph Tobin of Newark, New
Jersey — amplified an address given Jan. 9 by Pope
Leo XIV to the Vatican’s diplomatic corps.
“We renounce war as an instrument for narrow
national interests and proclaim that military action
must be seen only as a last resort in extreme
situations, not a normal instrument of national policy,”
said the cardinals, each of whom were staunch allies
of Pope Francis and were present at the conclave that
elected Leo. “We seek a foreign policy that respects
and advances the right to human life, religious liberty,
and the enhancement of human dignity throughout
the world, especially through economic assistance.”
Earlier in history, human sacrifice, torture, slavery,
gladiator sports, wife beating, child abuse and animal
cruelty were all perfectly normal. Now they are
barbaric in every civilized country. War belongs in
this club.
I hope that Pope Leo’s final product will include:
1) Starting a Second Marshall Plan that will end
poverty everywhere and reverse global warming,
2) Taxing arms sales,
3) Beginning a moratorium on nuclear weapons
research,
4) Reducing the bloated US military budget by 50%,
(The US defense budget is equal to the next 9
countries in line.)
5) Training armed forces for disaster relief,
6) Establishing a cabinet level War Abolition
Department,
7) Reducing American and Russian nuclear weapons
to 1,000 each, and,
8) Reducing American overseas military bases from
750 to 100,
9) Negotiating for all the world’s nuclear weapons to
go off hair trigger alert,
10) Reforming Income Tax Code where only major
corporations and families with more than $250,000
annual income would pay federal income tax, and,
11) Abolish the War on Drugs which has been
ineffective and corrupt. Look at the drug laws in
Portugal, the Netherlands and Uruguay.
12) Establish a world-wide FEMA (Federal Emergency
Management Program) for famines, fires, wars,
droughts, floods recovery for every country.
13) Regulate artificial intelligence.
14) Fund alternative energy.
It is not just Quakers and hippies who have told us
that humans have to end war, see this excerpt from
General Douglas MacArthur’s address to the US
Congress on April 19, 1951:
Commentary by Joe Zarantanello
Men since the beginning of time have sought
peace. Various methods through the ages have
been attempted to devise an international
process to prevent or settle disputes between
nations. From the very start workable methods
were found in so far as individual citizens were
concerned, but the mechanics of an
instrumentality of larger international scope
have never been successful. Military alliances,
balances of power, Leagues of Nations, all in
turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of
the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of
war now blocks out this alternative. We have
had our last chance. If we will not devise some
greater and more equitable system,
Armageddon will be at our door. The problem
basically is theological and involves a spiritual
recrudescence and improvement of human
character that will synchronize with our almost
matchless advances in science, art, literature,
and all material and cultural developments of
the past 2000 years. It must be of the spirit if
we are to save the flesh.
Ed O’Rourke is a certified public accountant from
Houston, Texas, living in Medellin, Colombia since
- In 1969, he realized that it was not just the
Vietnam War was wrong. They are all wrong.