On April 16, 2026, from the cathedral of Bamenda, in Cameroon, Pope Leon XIV declared that the world was being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants”. A few days later, he wrote that “God is not with the tyrants nor with the arrogant”, but rather he stands on the side “of the humble and the weakest”. In response, Trump attacked him. Vice President Vance advised him to stick to moral questions. That’s exactly what the pope was doing.
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Benjamin Netanyahu were certainly in the pope’s crosshairs. They are united by a strong desire for power and hegemony. They see the world as a zero-sum game – what one wins, the other loses. But they are wrong – their wars only create losers. Everywhere. War is a negative-sum game, with the final tally measured in bodies, devastated families, rubble, and squandered billions.
The enumeration of the victims of these men and their destruction is staggering.
Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022. For the empire. For the nostalgia of a bygone greatness. For his name to outlive his body. Since then, at least 15,300 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and 42,100 injured, according to the UN. Entire cities have been razed. Hospitals bombed. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has documented at least 770 children killed. But Ukrainians are not the only victims. British intelligence estimates around 250,000 Russian soldiers killed. Adding the wounded, it amounts to nearly a million Russian casualties – mostly young men from peripheral regions, overrepresented among the dead. Conscripts torn away from their families, sent to perish for the ambitions of a man who sleeps in a guarded palace.
There is a constant in history that repeats itself tirelessly: there is no need to search for oligarchs’ sons in the lists of the dead – you won’t find any. The wars of tyrants are always fought by the poor, those who lack the connections or money to escape conscription. In Moscow, young people from wealthy families get medical certificates or leave the country. Far from the capital, workers had to board army buses directly upon leaving the mine. This was true in 1914. And it remains true today.
Since October 2023, Benjamin Netanyahu has been leading an unprecedented offensive in the Gaza Strip, described as genocide by Amnesty International. According to UNICEF, over 72,000 Palestinian deaths have been recorded, including at least 21,000 children. Yes, 21,000. According to the UN, 70% of identified victims were women and children. Entire families have been wiped out, from great-grandparents to great-grandchildren. Family trees eradicated by a bomb. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He still travels. He still orders bombings. The children, however, are condemned and will no longer travel anywhere.
Donald Trump, finally. In February 2026, the United States launched a military operation with Israel against Iran. An American strike on a school in Minab killed 168 people, including over 100 children, according to Amnesty International. Another strike allegedly hit a school in Lamerd, with children among the victims. Meanwhile, Trump was aiming to “send Iran back to the Stone Age” and targeting civilian infrastructure – which constitutes a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions. He said it loud. In capital letters.
And while the bombs were falling, the Strait of Hormuz was blocked, energy prices skyrocketed, and ordinary families in Montreal, Lyon, Lagos, Manila – paid at the pump and grocery store for military adventures they did not ask for. The United Nations warns that the war risks plunging 32 million people into poverty globally. Imminent food crises are feared, as several key fertilizer inputs are blocked in the Persian Gulf. The sum of social and economic suffering inflicted on the poorest of this planet is hard to imagine.
In the face of geopolitical instability, as countries around the world increase military budgets, schools, hospitals, libraries, and homes will not be built, due to lack of public funds. There will be a shortage of money for the environment, culture, supporting families, paying pensions. War is a cancer that devours everything.
Of course, the three tyrants mentioned above are not alone. Hamas massacred 1,200 Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, burning families in their homes and taking children hostage. The Iranian regime brutally suppresses its own people’s protests and funds militias across the Middle East. These actors are also tyrants – perhaps less powerful, but equally devoid of scruples.
What unites them all is a disregard for life. Whether they are Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, they betray the fundamental message of these traditions – peace, human dignity, the commandment not to kill. They take these ancient texts and turn them into fuel for their ambitions, convinced that their violence is sacred. It is the oldest lie in the world, and the deadliest.
The tyrants leading these wars do not risk their own lives. Putin is not in a trench in Bakhmout. Netanyahu is not running under the bombs in Gaza. Trump is not in a school in Minab. The Hamas leaders did not sacrifice themselves on October 7. They would probably change their attitude if they were sent to the front line. But they remain hidden while others die in their name.
Georges Brassens understood this, in his unforgettable pacifist anthem “Dying for Ideas”: the firebrands tend to outlast Methuselah in longevity. Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump are 73, 76, and 79 years old respectively. Ali Khamenei was 86 at his death under American bombs. And Brassens reserves for them one of the great lines of French song: “You, the firebrands / You, the good masters / Die first, we give you way / But please, by thunder / Let the others live / Life is almost their only luxury here on earth.”
So what we ask for, simply, is to let us live. In a world where a child can go to school without risking death from a bomb. Where a family can sleep in their home without the walls collapsing on them. Where the men who decide on wars are compelled to justify them before a court, a parliament, before history – rather than tweeting about them at 3 am in capital letters.
Let us live in peace.
