On Saturday, Greensburg Diocese Bishop Larry J. Kulick gathered people at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral to bow their heads and share hope for a common goal: peace.
The vigil came at a time when many people are feeling growing tension —at the gas pump, on TV, on social media—as hostilities continue in Iran and beyond.
The bishop echoed a call from Pope Leo XIV, urging the faithful across the globe to pray as people are dying overseas and each day brings increased uncertainty.
The concern stretches far beyond Greensburg.
“It’s important for me to hear it in my own little community,” Taylor Stuart said.
That message feels particularly important as another conflict takes shape — this one between the pope and President Donald Trump.
Pope Leo was elected in May 2025, just months after President Trump’s second inauguration. The first American-born pope — a Chicago native — his missionary background has been evident in his advocacy for peacemaking and service to others.
Trump has been forceful and loud about issues that contradicted the pope’s positions, both at home and abroad. That is most evident in the Middle East military actions.
Over the last two weeks, the opposition has become more pronounced, with the pope saying God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war,” and Trump calling Leo “weak” on crime and saying he wants Iran to have nuclear weapons.
The disagreement isn’t surprising. The Vatican is both the seat of the Roman Catholic Church and its own nation. Differences over war and policy are as old as both government and the church.
Likewise, peace can seem very political when the word is in the mouth of a politician or a diplomat, or coming from a pundit or a protester.
But an exhortation to peace from the pope is not a sit-in on a college campus. It is not a march on Washington or a bus boycott in Alabama. It is not at all extraordinary.
It is not even uniquely papal — or Catholic.
A call for peace, especially coupled with a prayer, is the most baseline message of any cleric of any faith.
The Bible says it: “Blessed are the peacemakers.” The Hebrew word “shalom” is, in itself, a wish for peace. The standard Muslim greeting is “peace be upon you.”
“Once we accept that gift of peace, we can all be agents of change,” Kulick said Saturday.
This is not a political statement. It is nondenominational. It is merely a human desire to live without fear.
This was the message heard Saturday in Greensburg — and doubtless in other houses of worship around the world these days.
It should not be controversial.