Pope Francis asked that the rulers listen “with seriousness and respect” to the world cry for peace and warned about the threats that are made “openly” of the possible use of nuclear weapons.
“This year our prayer has become a cry, because today peace is seriously violated, wounded, trampled: and this in Europe, that is, in the continent that in the last century experienced the tragedies of the two world wars,” he stated. the Pontiff closing a three-day meeting dedicated to peace in the Colosseum in Rome.
“Unfortunately, since then, wars have never stopped bloodying and impoverishing the earth, but the moment we are experiencing is particularly dramatic,” Francis lamented after leading an interreligious prayer with other participants in the meeting.
For the Pope, in this framework, “peace is at the heart of religions, in their Scriptures and in their message.”
“Let us not be infected by the perverse logic of war; let us not fall into the trap of hating the enemy”Pope Francisco
“In the silence of prayer, this afternoon, we hear the cry for peace: peace suffocated in so many regions of the world, humiliated by too much violence, denied even to children and the elderly, who are not spared the terrible harshness of war” Jorge Bergoglio added later to close the event in which the presidents of France, Emmanuel Macron, and Italy, Sergio Mattarella, among other participants, also spoke.
For Francis, as he said together with Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist and other faith exponents, “The cry for peace is often silenced not only by the rhetoric of war, but also by the indifference. He is silenced by the hatred that grows as they fight each other.”
The request for peace, for the Pope, “cannot be repressed: it arises from the hearts of mothers, it is written on the faces of refugees, families fleeing, the wounded or the dying.”
Prayer is that humble strength that gives #peace and disarm hearts of hate.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex_es) October 25, 2022
“This silent cry rises to heaven. It does not know magic formulas to get out of conflicts, but it has the sacrosanct right to ask for peace in the name of the suffering suffered, and it deserves to be heard,” he added later in front of the nearly 2,000 people present. , according to the organizers.
Thus, as Bergoglio put it, the cry for peace “deserves that everyone, starting with the rulers, stoop down to listen with seriousness and respect”.
“The cry for peace expresses the pain and horror of war, the mother of all poverty,” he deepened.
In this context, the Pope implicitly referred to the latest tensions between Ukraine and Russia, stating: “Today, in effect, what was feared and what we never wanted to hear is happening: that is, the use of weapons nuclear weapons, which guiltily continued to be produced and tested after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is now openly a threat”.
On the nuclear issue, the Pope was explicit in endorsing John XXIII’s pleas for the rulers to stop the atomic race, “whose terrible consequences cannot be predicted.”
“Let us not be infected by the perverse logic of war; let us not fall into the trap of hatred of the enemy”, the Pope called before the participants of the meeting organized by the Catholic community of Sant’Egidio, which was also attended by, among others, the leader Argentinian Juan Grabois and the Cordovan fighter against human trafficking Alicia Peressutti.
“Let us put peace at the center of the vision of the future, as the central objective of our personal, social and political action, at all levels,” he finally proposed.
