Both Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will attend the inaugural Mass of Pope Leo XIV on May 18, the vice president’s office said.

“The peoples of our world desire peace,” Pope Leo XIV said, “and to their leaders I appeal with all my heart: Let us meet, let us talk, let us negotiate! War is never inevitable.”

In a letter to Rabbi Noam Marans of the American Jewish Committee, Pope Leo XIV expressed his intention to strengthen Catholic-Jewish relations.

Pope Leo XIV asked journalists to be peacemakers by shunning prejudice and anger in their reporting, and he called for the release of journalists imprisoned for their work.

“The way we communicate is of fundamental importance: we must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war,” Pope Leo told members of the media on Monday.

Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago and one of the 10 U.S. cardinal electors at the conclave that elected the first ever American pope, discusses the conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV.