Pope Leo XIV's encyclical takes up the legacy of the 1986 Assisi peace meeting

The encyclical Magnifica humanitas, dated May 15, 2026, expressly takes up the spirit of Assisi that John Paul II set in motion 40 years ago. In paragraph 223, Pope Leo XIV writes that "believers can drink again from the most authentic sources of their spiritual traditions, where there is no place for sacralized hatred," with a direct reference to the meeting of October 27, 1986, and its continuation under later popes. Leo XIV brings four decades of that legacy into the Church's social reflection on present-day challenges.

That gathering brought representatives of the world's major religious traditions to Assisi, in central Italy, for a day of prayer for peace. John Paul II appointed Cardinal Roger Etchegaray to lead the initiative. He presided over a day that included young Jews offering olive branches to Muslim leaders, an exchange of peace among Christian bishops in the Cathedral of San Rufino, and a rainbow that broke across the sky as the morning ended. Each community prayed according to its own tradition, without merging rites or convictions. Etchegaray summed up the guiding principle using John Paul II's own words: "Being together to pray, but not praying together."

Verifying the faith through encounter

On December 22, 1986, John Paul II gave the Roman Curia a theological reading of the event. He said the identity of the Catholic Church was strengthened at Assisi, not because it had celebrated a diplomatic success, but because it had verified its faith in a setting of mutual respect. The relationship with the Second Vatican Council ran both ways: the council illuminated the meeting, and the meeting made it possible to read the council more deeply. Four years later, in the encyclical Redemptoris missio, he linked Assisi to the action of the Holy Spirit: "Every authentic prayer is prompted by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in every human heart." Interreligious dialogue had a theological basis, not merely a diplomatic one.

On January 20, 2002, John Paul II returned to Assisi against a background of terrorism and the September 11, 2001 attacks. Prayer took on a dimension of public responsibility: religious communities had to repudiate violence that sought to justify itself by invoking God. "Whoever uses religion to foment violence contradicts its most authentic and profound inspiration," he said then. The meeting was not an escape from history but a responsible way of facing it.

Widening the circle and an examination of conscience

On October 27, 2011, the 25th anniversary, Benedict XVI widened the invitation to those who, without professing a religious faith, were seeking truth and goodness. He called them "pilgrims of truth, pilgrims of peace." Benedict XVI also pressed a further point: the image of God can be clouded by the way religions are lived. It was not enough to condemn those who used religion as an instrument; believers had to ask whether their own way of presenting the faith really showed the face of a God of peace or distorted it.

On September 20, 2016, Pope Francis summed up the continuity with one clarification: "On the contrary, we have prayed with one another, for one another." With that he ruled out syncretism and relativism and stressed fraternity. Dialogue had to give a voice to the victims of wars, to refugees and to the poor. Prayer had to be matched by concrete cooperation and by efforts to attack the roots of conflict. The threat was not only fanaticism but also indifference.

The legacy in Magnifica humanitas

In Magnifica humanitas, Leo XIV carries that 40-year legacy into the present. Religions, the encyclical says, can counter the culture of violence not by watering down their own convictions but by returning to their most genuine origins.