Europe’s accelerated military spending, driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine and questions about the durability of US security guarantees, has sharpened a familiar tension: how to strengthen defence without making force the organising principle of security.¹

At a Brussels conference of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to the European Union, framed that tension as part of a wider European crisis involving security, economic competitiveness and what he described as an erosion of founding values. “In the face of a crisis in peace, security and multilateralism, the Church teaches unarmed and disarming peace,” he said, adding that security “cannot be separated from a culture of peace and dialogue.”¹

Auza’s argument is not a rejection of military defence. He said the Church was “not naively pacifist” and defended the continued relevance of just-war doctrine as an expression of a nation’s right to self-defence and the defence of fundamental values.¹ The distinction, in the Vatican’s account, is between maintaining the capacity to resist aggression and treating arms as the primary route to lasting stability.

A second account of the conference makes the same case more directly: defence investment can be justified by recent conflicts and shifts within NATO, but only if its ultimate purpose is preventing war rather than preparing for it.² Both accounts place reconciliation and diplomatic engagement ahead of reliance on military strength alone.

The Brussels discussion also connected security to migration and social resilience. Participants examined rapid, social-media-driven movements toward Ceuta and the economic incentives behind migrant smuggling, while arguing that Europe should address vulnerabilities without relinquishing humanitarian principles.¹ For the Vatican-linked forum, the broader message was consistent: security policy, economic policy and ethical responsibility should reinforce one another rather than compete.²