Latter-day Saint apostle Ulisses Soares had a rare opportunity this week to hear directly from a Catholic pope.

The Brazilian apostle was among the interfaith leaders who gathered Monday at the Palacio San Martín in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and listened attentively to Pope Leo XIV’s call to safeguard human dignity and unite for the common good.

On a 10-day journey through several South American countries, the U.S.-born pontiff told the religious leaders that “whenever we pray … we must care for those who live alongside us, making the words we utter authentic through renewed fraternity.”

Leo encouraged the leaders, according to Vatican News, “to work together to defend human dignity, promote freedom and nurture hope, noting that authentic prayer must translate into concrete gestures of fraternity, justice and peace.”

Soares said on social media he was “especially touched by the pope’s expressions of respect for human dignity and the importance of uniting our efforts to protect human life and the world in which we live.”

Soares praised the pope’s “desire to unite efforts to avoid wars,” he said in a news release from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and “to invite all people to promote peace in the world.”

The charge to be peacemakers echoed themes from top Latter-day Saint authorities.

Church President Dallin H. Oaks “has recently urged all of God’s children to become peacemakers by following the first and second great commandments of loving God and neighbor.” Soares wrote in his social post. “May each of us live by these principles and continue to find common ground with those with whom we share this beautiful world.”

Soares is also on a 10-day trip in the region, the church said in a release, with an additional stop planned in Paraguay. He noted Argentina’s place in the history of the Utah-based church in South America.

“The gospel of Christ in South America started here in Buenos Aires,” he said. “A little seed was planted many years ago, more than 100 years ago now, and that seed grew in the whole continent, including Brazil.”

Soares is not the first top-tier Latter-day Saint leader to be in the presence of a Catholic pope.

In 2014, apostle Henry B. Eyring, currently in the faith’s governing First Presidency, greeted Pope Frances in what is believed to be the first time a Catholic pope and high-level Latter-day Saint authority met face to face.

Eyring was in Rome to attend a three-day conference with religious leaders and scholars from 14 faiths and 23 countries titled “An International Interreligious Colloquium on the Complementarity of Man and Woman.”

Five years later, President Russell M. Nelson got a hug from the pope in the first-ever audience between a Catholic pontiff and a Latter-day Saint prophet.

On March 9, 2019, Francis and Nelson sat down for a 33-minute exchange at the Vatican, a day before the American-born faith dedicated its first temple in Rome, the cradle of Catholicism.

Francis and Nelson, accompanied by apostle M. Russell Ballard, who died in 2023, discussed global relief and the two global faiths’ mutual efforts to relieve human suffering and other issues of joint concern.

Leo said Monday’s gathering rested “on the pillars of dialogue and friendship,” encouraging his religious counterparts to strengthen their ties by “building new bridges” and finding new paths of cooperation.

Latter-day Saint leaders look to continue such interfaith connections — as evidenced by Soares’ inclusion in the Argentine meeting.