Most Holy Father Pope Leo XIV,

Your Holiness ascends the Chair of Saint Peter at a time when the world yearns for moral clarity and courageous compassion. We write to you with a plea born of both faith and desperation—on behalf of a people long silenced, and a country at risk of vanishing from the world’s conscience.

In 2017, your predecessor Pope Francis made a courageous and historic visit to Myanmar—the first pontiff ever to walk among its people. In Naypyidaw, he stood before generals and officials and called for peace, reconciliation, and dialogue, urging all to be “reconciled through dialogue, mutual understanding and a spirit of cooperation and solidarity.” Later, when Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned again, Pope Francis was among the first global leaders to speak out, calling for her freedom and reminding the world of its moral responsibility to stand with Myanmar’s people.

His presence in Myanmar was more than symbolic; it was a beacon of hope in a fractured land.

But today, that hope is under siege.

Since the brutal coup of February 2021, Myanmar has descended into one of the darkest chapters in its modern history. Over 22,000 political prisoners—including Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her democratically elected government—languish in prison. Many are held in solitary confinement. Many have already been tortured to death. Countless others have disappeared. Even now, there is no proof of life for Aung San Suu Kyi herself, and recent reports of severe heart complications could foreshadow her final days of life.

Meanwhile, the military regime continues to bomb villages, churches, schools, and monasteries in a campaign of calculated terror. Their purpose is not only to kill, but to break the spirit of an entire people.

Now, the junta prepares to stage a sham election to cement its illegitimate rule. This is not democracy—it is theatre performed at gunpoint, with the opposition silenced by imprisonment, execution, or exile. It is the annihilation of hope disguised as politics.

The enclosed book, Conversation with a Dictator: A Challenge to the Authoritarian Assault, by Alan Clements—a former Buddhist monk in Myanmar and veteran journalist—offers a testament to Myanmar’s revolution of conscience. For four decades, he has borne witness to the courage of its people, documenting how they have met violence with non-violence, hatred with dignity, and tyranny with truth.

Our campaign—Use Your Freedom—is sending this book to leaders and conscience-holders across the globe, believing, as you yourself have said, that truth and freedom cannot be silenced. These prisoners are not only victims; they are visionaries—the moral compass of a nation, the prophets of a future struggling to be born.

Yet the world has largely turned away. Some remain silent due to distorted perceptions of Aung San Suu Kyi’s role in the Rohingya crisis. But truth matters. Neither the UN’s 2018 Fact-Finding Mission nor the U.S. State Department found credible evidence of genocidal intent in her civilian government. On the contrary, she consistently called for reform, citizenship rights, and commissions of inquiry—even within the suffocating limits of a military-dominated system. 

To allow false narratives to erase her moral leadership is to reward the very forces of tyranny that fear her most.

Your Holiness, you now stand at a crossroads where silence would echo as complicity, but your voice could help alter the course of history. You can carry forward the moral clarity of Pope Francis’s 2017 visit and his later call for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release—transforming memory into action, witness into renewal. His words still ring: “Reconciliation is not a surrender of values, but a dialogue of hearts.” That dialogue must not be allowed to die.

We humbly ask:

• Will you speak publicly on behalf of Myanmar’s political prisoners before the junta holds its sham election?
• Will you call for their immediate release—including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains silenced, unseen, and unheard?

Over three million people are displaced. Over twenty million urgently need humanitarian aid. Myanmar is being starved, bombed, and erased before the eyes of a watching world.

Holy Father, in this hour of crisis, your words could bring light into a darkness that many have begun to believe is permanent. We do not ask you to save one leader’s reputation. We ask you to help save a nation’s soul.

Please, use your freedom to help them reclaim theirs.

With deep respect and urgency,

Fergus Harlow
Executive Director, Use Your Freedom

Alan Clements
Author, Conversation with a Dictator & Unsilenced