The Vatican Publishing House releases a new book by Pope Leo XIV entitled Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift. Edited by Alessandro Banfi, the volume brings together Pope Leo’s addresses and reflections on peace since his election on 8 May 2025. The collection, which hits the bookshelves in Italian but will soon be available in English, opens with a previously unpublished text by the Pope. “Peace be with you” was the Risen Jesus’ first greeting to his apostles (Jn 20:19). This was also the first gift the risen Christ offered to his friends and to the whole world: peace.That gift, however, did not come “cheap”: the glorious body of the Master of Nazareth showed the wounds of the Passion. He experienced hatred, violence, the crucifige of the world. Disarmed and disarming, Jesus Christ endured injustice, and he rose. The Gospel proclamation inserted and inserts itself in history today as it did 2,000 years ago. Peace is the great desire that stirs many hearts, but it is also often threatened, trampled upon and derided. Today, a good 103 States are involved in some way, in a war on Earth.[1] Weapons boom and kill in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Sudan, in Myanmar, in Yemen, in Congo and in many other situations. In his time, my beloved predecessor Pope Francis coined the expression, “third world war fought piecemeal”, to describe a situation of widespread conflict, without precedent since the end of the Second World War. Looking through my addresses on this topic, now compiled in this anthology, I would like to underline some aspects that are close to my heart. Part of the Preface to Pope Leo’s new book.