Pope Leo on Thursday (May 14, 2026) decried rising European military spending, which grew last year by the highest amount since the end of the Cold War amid pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, saying it was a betrayal of diplomacy.
Pope Leo, who has drawn Mr. Trump’s ire in recent weeks after criticizing the Iran war, told university students in Rome that they should not refer to such rearmament as defence spending, adding that the world was being “maimed by wars”.
“Let us not call ‘defence’ a rearmament that increases tensions and insecurity, impoverishes investments in education and health, betrays trust in diplomacy, and enriches elites who care nothing for the common good,” said the pontiff.
Military spending across the continent rose 14% in 2025 to $864 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and rearmament by European North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly chastised European allies to spend more on arms, and signed an executive order in February that would re-prioritize the customer list for U.S. weapons in favour of countries with higher defence spending.
At Mr. Trump’s urging, NATO in 2025 supported a new defence spending target of 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for its members.
Pope Leo has been speaking out against the direction of world leadership in recent weeks. On Thursday (May 14, 2026), he was addressing students at Rome’s Sapienza University, the largest institution of higher learning in Europe.
The Pope also warned about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in warfare, citing conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon and Iran as showing “the inhumane evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation”.
Pope Leo urged the some 1,10,000 students at the university not to “close themselves within ideologies and national borders”.
“Together with me and with many brothers and sisters, be artisans of true peace,” the Pope pleaded.