Pope: May the lost eyes of children in the face of war convert us
Pope Leo XIV sent a letter to Popotus, a children's supplement, for its 30th anniversary. The Pope urged people to maintain a "childlike outlook on reality" to "remain human." He stated that the "lost eyes" of children affected by war should prompt true conversion. The letter also cautioned parents and educators to shield children from an "inhuman idea of information and education," particularly concerning the digital age and artificial intelligence.
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Pope Leo XIV penned a letter to Popotus, the children's supplement of Avvenire, marking its 30th anniversary on March 23, 2026.1
He thanks the publication for sharing good and bad news with children to encourage and teach.1
In times of wars threatening humanity's future, the Pope urges looking to children's "lost eyes" for true conversion.1
These eyes amid war's barbarity can inspire relearning to gaze at each other and the world with purity.1
To remain human in the digital age, all need a childlike view of reality, especially parents and teachers protecting kids from dehumanizing information.1
The Pope stresses ongoing education to safeguard childhood and foster protagonists of a renewed world.1
He cautions against children viewing AI chatbots as best friends or oracles, which dulls intellect, relationships, creativity, and thinking.1
Such reliance numbs growth, demanding guidance to counter science and technology's risks.1
Children can restore beauty to the world, helping adults see it with wonder, trust, and without prejudice.1
Growing up, they must preserve trust in loved ones, love's language, smiles, apologies, and peace-making.1
Echoing Jesus—"Unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven"—the Pope says this keeps the essence of seeing and finding answers.1
He thanks parents and educators for nurturing each child's unique God-given gifts.1
Assess the Catholic Church’s teaching on protecting children from war’s harms
The Catholic Church consistently teaches that war constitutes a profound moral evil, causing immense suffering especially to the most vulnerable, including children, whose dignity as persons created in God’s image demands absolute protection. This protection is rooted in the Gospel imperative to love one’s neighbor, the presumption against war in contemporary magisterial teaching, and urgent papal appeals to end conflicts and safeguard children from violence, displacement, and exploitation.
Catholic doctrine affirms the inherent dignity of every human person, with special emphasis on children as embodiments of hope and future generations. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) underscores that parents and society must respect children as children of God, educating them in fulfillment of divine law. This extends to protecting their bodies and lives, as "the body [is meant] for the Lord," demanding reverence especially for the suffering. Respect for persons entails recognition of rights prior to society, forming the moral basis of authority; failure to protect them undermines legitimacy.
Children’s names and identities are sacred icons of their personhood, requiring protection from dehumanizing harms like those of war. Christian initiation and family life further highlight nurturers’ duty to safeguard the life entrusted by God. In wartime, these principles condemn any violence targeting innocents, aligning with the Church’s role to remind all of these inviolable rights.
The Church views war not merely as a political event but as a sinful condition afflicting humanity, with children bearing disproportionate suffering. Classical just war theory, from Aquinas onward, distinguished just acts of force from the evil of war’s overall state (malum poenae and malum culpae), rejecting glorification of conflict. Contemporary popes have intensified this, adopting a "presumption against war" over the classical "presumption against injustice," responding to modern horrors like world wars and nuclear threats.
This shift emphasizes peace as paramount, with war’s condition deemed "sinful and an affront to reason." Children exemplify this: one in six globally is affected by war’s violence, even without direct enlistment. Papal documents decry children dying under bombs, sacrificed to "idols of power, ideology, and nationalistic interests," denying humanity’s future. War’s "darkness" evokes loss of color, stench, cold, hunger, fear, and parental abandonment, as recalled by survivors.
Popes have repeatedly addressed children in armed conflicts, urging global efforts to end wars and restore dignity.
These align with just war’s evolution: Pius XII rejected offensive war and honor-based pretexts, emphasizing proportionality amid nuclear risks; successors prioritize peace over force.
While affirming limited just recourse to force, the tradition protects non-combatants, implicitly shielding children. Scholastics allowed punishment post-bellum, not depredations to "enforce vindicative justice," a modality now disallowed. Modern teaching rules out national prestige as casus belli, subordinating war to charity and peace. Pius XII condemned provoking war for virtues like courage as "crime and sheer lunacy."
Contemporary emphasis on jus ad bellum proportionality—heightened by technology—rejects disproportionate harms to innocents. The U.S. Bishops’ Challenge of Peace (1983) exemplifies the presumption against war, favoring peaceful dispute resolution.
Recent papal actions reinforce protection: Pope Leo XIV’s 2026 Chirograph integrates World Children’s Day into the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life, building on Francis’s concern for children amid synergies for their defense. His 2025 message to the Pontifical Commission for Protection of Minors promotes abuse prevention and cultures of trust, extending to war’s indirect harms like trauma.
The Church’s teaching unequivocally prioritizes protecting children from war’s physical, psychological, and existential harms through dignity-based rights, a presumption against war, and papal imperatives for peacebuilding. While just war retains moral legitimacy in extremis, its strict criteria and modern evolution safeguard the innocent, urging all toward fraternity. This demands concrete action: ending conflicts, aiding victims, and rejecting violence’s normalization.