Pope Leo’s Peace Call Obscures Colonial Legacies: Systemic Analysis of Global Coexistence Failures

Indigenous traditions universally frame coexistence as relational and ecological, not merely moral or theological. The Catholic Church’s peace rhetoric, however, divorces spirituality from land and kin, erasing Indigenous epistemologies where peace is inseparable from territory and sovereignty. The Vatican’s 2022 apology for residential schools was a belated recognition of this erasure, yet it still frames reconciliation as a top-down process rather than a decolonial unlearning of Christian supremacy.

The Catholic Church’s role in global conflict is deeply entangled with colonial expansion, from the 1493 papal bull *Inter caetera* that divided the Americas to its alliance with European monarchies in the Thirty Years’ War. Modern peace initiatives, like the 1965 *Nostra aetate*, were reactive to secular critiques of religious violence, yet the Church’s structural ties to power persist in its investments in extractive industries and conservative political lobbies. Historical parallels show that moral appeals alone cannot dismantle systems built on conquest and extraction.

Cross-cultural analysis reveals that coexistence is often practiced outside religious institutions: in secular anarchist communes, Indigenous land-back movements, or Buddhist monastic networks that reject state violence. The Vatican’s universalist claims are contradicted by local theologies—e.g., Latin American liberation theology’s focus on structural sin versus papal emphasis on individual repentance. Non-Western traditions also highlight how peace is negotiated through land restitution and reparations, not just interfaith dialogue.

Peace research demonstrates that structural inequality, not moral failings, is the primary driver of conflict, as shown by studies linking economic disparity to civil unrest (e.g., Gini coefficient correlations). The Vatican’s peace discourse lacks empirical grounding, ignoring data on how neoliberal policies and militarized borders create the conditions it condemns. Neuroscientific studies on trauma also reveal that top-down peace initiatives often retraumatize marginalized groups by centering institutional authority over community-led healing.

Artistic traditions across cultures depict peace as a dynamic, embodied practice—from the Islamic *sufi* poetry of Rumi to the African American gospel tradition’s call for justice as divine harmony. The Catholic Church’s peace imagery often relies on static iconography (e.g., the *Pax* symbol), which obscures the lived struggle of coexistence. Meanwhile, Indigenous art forms like the Haudenosaunee wampum belts encode treaties as living agreements, contrasting with the Vatican’s archival approach to reconciliation.

Scenario modeling suggests that institutional peace rhetoric will fail to address 21st-century conflicts without addressing climate-induced migration, AI-driven disinformation, and the collapse of biodiversity—all exacerbated by extractive capitalism. Alternative futures include decentralized peace networks (e.g., Zapatista autonomous zones) and reparative justice models like the Caribbean’s CARICOM Reparations Commission. The Vatican’s current approach risks becoming a relic of a dying paradigm unless it embraces systemic transformation.

Marginalized voices—LGBTQ+ Catholics, Indigenous survivors of residential schools, and Global South feminists—have long critiqued the Church’s peace discourse as a tool of oppression. Queer theologians like Marcella Althaus-Reid argue that the Vatican’s ‘family values’ rhetoric perpetuates violence against queer communities, while African feminist theologians like Mercy Amba Oduyoye highlight how patriarchal structures in the Church silence women’s peacebuilding. These perspectives are systematically excluded from mainstream narratives on coexistence.