Vatican City, Aug 24, 2024 / 11:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis called the heart of war an “abyss of evil” during a meeting with Catholic politicians and legislators at the Vatican on Saturday.
“Our consciences cannot fail to be moved by the scenes of death and destruction daily before our eyes,” the pope said Aug. 24, about the many violent conflicts taking place around the globe.
“We need to hear the cry of the poor, the ‘widows and orphans’ of which the Bible speaks,” he continued, “in order to see the abyss of evil at the heart of war and to resolve by every means possible to choose peace.”
Francis addressed the topic of war in an audience with members of the International Catholic Legislators Network (ICLN) in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace.
He said it is imperative to renounce war as a suitable way of resolving international conflicts and establishing peace, urging the Catholic legislators and all men and women of good will “to build a world — to cultivate a garden — marked by fraternity, justice, and peace.”
ICLN met the pope as it holds its 15th annual meeting in the Italian cities of Rome and Frascati (on the southeast outskirts of Rome), from Aug. 22-25. The theme of the gathering is “The World at War: Permanent Crises and Conflicts — What Does It Mean for Us?”
The network’s mission is to help Christians in public office exercise “virtuous and effective leadership that is committed to the dignity of every human being.”
St. Thomas More is the patron of the group, whose members must uphold the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church in political life. The archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, is an honorary patron of the network.
In his remarks, the pontiff quoted from his 2020 encyclical on fraternity, Fratelli Tutti, which says that “War is a failure of politics and of humanity, a shameful capitulation, a stinging defeat before the forces of evil.”
He also lamented an increasing lack of distinction between military and civilian targets and the enormous destructive capacity of contemporary weapons.
The ongoing crisis of “a third world war fought piecemeal,” Francis continued, “seriously jeopardizes the patient efforts made by the international community, above all through multilateral diplomacy, to encourage cooperation in addressing the grave injustices and the pressing social, economic and environmental challenges facing our human family.”
He noted a need for patience and perseverance “in pursuing the path of peace, in season and out of season, through negotiation, mediation and arbitration.”
The pope also pointed out that, as Christians, we see that the roots of conflict in a society can be found “in a deeper conflict present in the human heart.”
“Conflicts may sometimes be unavoidable, yet they can only be resolved fruitfully in a spirit of dialogue and sensitivity to others and their reasons, and in shared commitment to justice in the pursuit of the common good,” the pontiff said.
He asked Catholic legislators to be witnesses of hope to a “war-weary world,” especially the next generation.
“May your commitment to the common good, buoyed by trust in Christ’s promises, serve as an example for our young people,” he encouraged. “How important it is for them to see models of hope and idealism that counter the messages of pessimism and cynicism to which they are so often exposed.”
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Viva Cristo Rey
Vive le Christ Roi
Vienna
Lepanto
As mankind is fallen Satan will always induce war. When Martin Lucifer split the Christian Church it resulted in Germany instigating three outrageous wars that literally decimated Europe, led to Bolshevism in Russia, and the ongoing disintegration of Western civilization.
How we pray we might have a defender of the Faith as Saint Pope Pius V instead of someone who sounds like John Lennon.
In ancient times our primitive ancestors left behind their loved ones and indulged in wars killing and maiming one another. Nowadays modern people look after the wellbeing of their loved ones and work for the betterment of Planet Earth, our common home.
Stupid Question?
If “war has an abyss of evil at its centre,” why does Bergoglio wage war on Sacred Tradition from underground China to downtown Chicago?
War is indeed a nasty business which results in death and destruction. Sadly, those who START the wars are rarely concerned about the women or children caught in the crossfire. When a nation declines to respond to an attack, it is perceived as weak, and is in fact encouraging another attack. What would the pope suggest they do??
Its become clear that some nations use their civilians as human shields in order to protect munitions and weapons of war. They do so deliberately. They hope their more humane enemy will therefore refuse to bomb such locations. They should be bombed anyway, in hope of rendering the munitions useless, and that this disgusting tactic will cease to be used in future.Some nations have been shown to use schools and hospitals as shields for their munitions. They are the nations that dont respect humanity in general, nor do they value the lives of their own citizens, let alone the citizens of other nations. And it is exceedingly hard to believe that such “civilian shields” have NO knowledge they are being used in such a way. If they know, are they STILL “innocent civilians”? It is therefore not a shock when they become collateral damage. Doing nothing is not an option in a war when you have been attacked. Nor is playing by “rules” which hold your nation’s response hostage and thus prolong the war.
Yes: “Conflicts may sometimes be unavoidable, yet they can only be resolved fruitfully in a spirit of dialogue and sensitivity to others and their reasons, and in shared commitment to justice in the pursuit of the common good.”
But what to do when one’s adversary has no commitment or even understanding to “reason” or “justice” or “the common good”? When such values are dismissed as only “European logic”? When the underlying marriage of faith and reason–providentially enabled when St. Paul entered into the Greek world–is dismissed in Benedict’s tyranny of relativism and worse?
Underscoring the merit of resistance to genuine evil, doesn’t the jihadist network clearly knows that killing of innocents is immoral? Instead, are they experiencing a horrified “desire to escape reality or transform it along the lines of a second reality more congenial to the ‘pheumopathological’ terrorist imagination”? The in-quotes term applies to a spiritual sickness rather than any psychological disorder or more rational thought process at least calculated to achieve justice, if by whatever means. They know what they are doing; “They are not psychopaths who cannot distinguish good and evil or innocence and guilt” (Barry Cooper, “Jihadists’ and the War on Terrorism,” The Intercollegiate Review, Spring 2007).
In order to fruitfully engage in diplomacy, mediation and cooperation, the foundation must first be established or remembered or perhaps taught. But, how to do this without reference to the incarnate Christ? And yet to mention this non-pluralist “special case” is to incite more persecution and violence.
What is the fully human basis of “fraternity”?