Pope Francis: War is always a loss for all humanity

August 11, 2019 CNA Daily News News Briefs 2 Print

Vatican City, Aug 11, 2019 / 09:14 am (CNA).- Pope Francis marked the 70th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions Sunday with a message urging the protection of life and human dignity in armed conflicts.

“Let us not forget that war and terrorism are always a serious loss for all humanity,” Pope Francis said Aug. 11 after his Angelus prayer.

The Geneva Conventions are “important international legal instruments that impose limits on the use of force and are aimed at the protection of civilians and prisoners in times of war,” Francis said.

Signed amid the aftermath of World War II on August 12, 1949, the four Geneva Conventions expanded international humanitarian law for the protection of civilian populations during war and further defined protocols for the humane treatment of prisoners of war, as well as for the wounded and the sick.

Pope Francis urged the particular importance of protecting unarmed populations and civil structures today, especially hospitals, schools, places of worship, and refugee camps.

Last month the pope spoke out after an airstrike hit a migrant detention center amid the armed conflict in Libya, killing more than 50 people. “The international community cannot tolerate such serious facts,” Francis said July 7.

Hospitals and schools also became targets during the Syrian civil war. More than 300 healthcare facilities in Syria were attacked in the conflict by 2018, according to Physicians for Human Rights.

Pope Francis said that he hopes that the anniversary of the Geneva Conventions will help countries today to be more “aware of the indispensable need to protect the life and dignity of victims of armed conflicts.”

“We are invited, that is, to live an authentic and mature faith, capable of illuminating the many ‘nights of life,’” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address.

The pope explained that “the lamp of faith needs to be constantly nourished with meeting Jesus heart to heart in prayer and listening to His Word.”

“True faith opens our hearts to others and spurs us towards concrete communion with our brothers, especially those in need,” Pope Francis said.

“The thought of our final encounter with the Father, rich in mercy, fills us with hope, and spurs us to a constant commitment to our sanctification and to build a more just and fraternal world,” he said.

 

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Pope: Nothing can erase baptism, that’s why it only happens once

May 9, 2018 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, May 9, 2018 / 02:46 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Wednesday that nothing can take away a person’s baptism or the salvation and identity they gain as a child of God, which is why the Church only allows for the sacrament to be administered once.

“Baptism is not repeated because it imprints an indelible spiritual sign: This sign is never erased by any sin, though sin prevents baptism from bringing the fruit of salvation,” the pope said during his May 9 general audience.

Just as parents give their children earthly life, the Church gives spiritual life through baptism, making each person a son of God through Jesus Christ, he said, explaining that at the moment of baptism, God tells each person that “you are my beloved child.”

“This paternal voice, imperceptible to the ear but well audible to the heart of those who believe, accompanies us for our entire lives, without abandoning us,” he said, adding that this is why the Church believes in only one baptism for salvation.

The belonging a person obtains from baptism “is something you never lose,” Francis said, even if a person sins with something as serious as murder, their belonging to God and his Church never goes away, “he continues to be a son.”

Even though everyone is a sinner and there is a great need for conversion in life of each person, “God never rejects his children,” he said, and asked the crowd to repeat the phrase with him out loud.

Speaking to pilgrims who braved a rainy forecast to join him for the audience in St. Peter’s Square, the pope continued his catechesis on baptism, focusing this week on the moment a person is actually baptized when the priest invokes the Trinity, saying “I baptize you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

He then pointed to the biblical passage in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans in which the apostle asked: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

The baptismal font is the place where one actually rises with Christ, he said, adding that in baptism, “the old man is buried, with his deceptive passions, so that he is reborn as a new creature.”

“At the same time you die and are born, and the same salutary wave becomes for you tomb and mother,” the pope said, quoting St. Cyril of Jerusalem.

Man’s rebirth as a new creation, then, naturally “demands that the man corrupted by sin is reduced to dust,” he said, adding that the images of the tomb and of the maternal womb referred to by St. Cyril are “incisive” phrases which express the reality of what happens during baptism.

To be incorporated in the body of Christ through baptism means one must also conform to him, Francis said, adding that the action of the Holy Spirit during the sacrament purifies, sanctifies and justifies the person in order to bring them into one body united to Christ.

This dynamic is expressed when the priest anoints the baptized person with oil after reciting the phrase: “God himself consecrates you with the chrism of salvation so that inserted into Christ, priest, king, and prophet, you will always be members of his body for eternal life.”

Pope Francis closed his address saying the entire vocation of a Catholic can be summed up as the necessity to live united to Jesus Christ and his Church “in order to carry out the same mission in this world, bringing fruits which last forever.”

“Animated by the only Spirit, the entire People of God participate in the functions of Jesus Christ, priest, prophet and king, and carry the responsibility of the mission and service that derive from them,” he said.

To participate in the kingly and prophetic priesthood of Christ, he said, means above all “to make oneself a free offering to God, giving testimony through a life of faith and charity, putting them at the service of others in the example of the Lord Jesus.”

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