Leo asks defeated Colombian president to work for peace amid political turmoil

Gustavo Petro is due to leave office on 7 August. His successor, Abelardo de la Espriella, won the presidential elections in June for the far-right party he founded, Defenders of the Homeland.

Pope Leo XIV urged Gustavo Petro, the outgoing president of Colombia and a former guerrilla fighter, to “always work for peace” during a private audience at the Vatican.

A left-wing former mayor of Bogotá who joined the M-19 guerrillas aged 17, Petro became president four years ago pledging to deliver “total peace” to the nation.  

In 2016, the Colombian government signed a historic peace agreement with the country’s largest armed group, the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), to end a 52-year- conflict.

Since 2022, numbers of armed rebels in Colombia have doubled from approximately 13,000 to 27,000 by late 2025, according to the Colombian think tank Fundación Ideas Para la Paz (FIP).

During the audience on 2 July, the Pope gave Petro a copy of his message for peace for 2026, asking that he “always work for peace whether you are or are not the president”. Petro later met the Holy See’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

In 1985, Petro was arrested for bearing illegal weapons linked to M-19, later serving a 16-month prison sentence before entering politics. He has said that his love for the poor is inspired by Liberation Theology.

Petro is due to leave office on 7 August. His successor, Abelardo de la Espriella, won the presidential elections in June for the far-right party he founded, Defenders of the Homeland.

On Monday, de la Espriella announced he was “immediately” suspending the presidential handover process with the “corrupt government” of Petro. De la Espriella, whose candidature to the presidency was endorsed by US President Donald Trump, accused Petro’s administration of seeking to “destroy Colombia” through its “decisions and conduct”. 

The day before, Petro had refused to acknowledge his electoral victory on 21 June, alleging fraud had occurred. He provided no evidence. 

Since his victory de la Espriella has been visiting Catholic shrines across Colombia, saying he entrusted the nation “to the protection of God”.

Writing on social media, de la Espriella – a lawyer whose nickname is “the Tiger” – said he was undertaking a “a journey of thanksgiving … the pilgrimage of hope for the miracle homeland”.  

He has prayed at Marian shrines and that of St Peter Claver, a sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit who cared for African slaves arriving by ship into the Caribbean port of Cartagena.

Priests, nuns and lay Catholics gathering for the fourth meeting of the “Church for the Poor” movement in Buga expressed concerns over the future of peace efforts in Colombia during de la Espriella’s presidency.

He recently announced on national radio that “the only peace which worked in Colombia was that conducted by paramilitary groups”.

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