The programmatic-ethical theorem of "care for creation" is not a biblical quotation in the sense of a ready-made formula; rather, it is a theological shorthand and stands for a multiplicity of motifs: God's creation as gift; the human being as a responsible part of the more-than-human world; turning-away as alienation/destruction; redemption as reconciliation; and ethics as a practical response to God's creative action. In the second half of the twentieth century, this theorem becomes a publicly resonant guiding concept for ecclesial peace ethics and, later, environmental ethics. Within the Vatican Secretariat of State, too, a performative consolidation takes place in this regard after the Second World War: biblical motifs are condensed into a programmatic ethics of responsibility in the field of peacekeeping. In this context, theological interpretations of the contemporary threat of annihilation also became a site of ecclesial self-positioning vis-à-vis—and within—a politically polarized world. The lecture interprets Paul VI's address to the United Nations (4 October 1965) as the climax of papal international peace policy and situates it within the Holy See's international politics after the Second Vatican Council—a pivotal moment in papal international engagement. At no point in Church history had a pope—despite emphasizing the particularity and mission of the papacy—integrated the papacy so intensively and so visibly into the world's own social and political environment, thereby deliberately, and in the spirit of the Council, turning away from formerly prevailing narratives of inequality.