Pope Leo XIV is among the world leaders invited to join Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace”. Initially aimed at ending the conflict in Gaza, Trump says it will also resolve conflicts globally. The Vatican’s secretary of state has said the pope needs time to consider whether to take part.

Leo, the first pope from the United States, forcefully decried conditions in Gaza in a Christmas Eve address. He has told journalists the only solution to the conflict is a Palestinian state. But the Vatican has long described its foreign policy as “positive neutrality”.

Formal membership of state-sponsored commissions has usually been avoided by the Holy See, the central government of the Catholic Church – which has diplomatic relations with 184 countries, plus the European Union and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, as well as a permanent observer status at the United Nations.

Across nearly two millennia, popes have been deeply involved in peace efforts. They have mediated disputes, facilitated negotiations, opened humanitarian corridors and applied moral pressure to restrain violence. Yet they have almost always done so from the sidelines: carefully positioned close enough to influence outcomes, but far enough away to preserve credibility with all parties.

Papal peacemaking has worked best when the pope could speak to everyone, even those who rejected the political order of the day. Neutrality is not a rhetorical posture, but a practical asset: hard won and easily lost.

Can the papacy maintain independent authority in an increasingly polarised world?

The Holy See has no army, no coercive economic power and no capacity to enforce compliance. What it has possessed, in varying degrees across time, is moral authority, diplomatic reach and access to networks that cross borders, ideologies and regimes.

In late antiquity, popes intervened at moments of acute danger, relying on prestige and symbolic authority rather than force. Pope Leo I’s........

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