Vatican City, Dec 22, 2024 / 11:50 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Sunday lamented the ongoing war and violence affecting families in Gaza and other parts of the world in the lead-up to Christmas and called for a “ceasefire on all war fronts.”
“With sorrow I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty; of the children machine-gunned, the bombing of schools and hospitals… So much cruelty!” the pope remarked during his Angelus address, which he gave via a video livestream from his Casa Santa Marta residence within the Vatican due to a cold.
More than 28 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed — including four children at the Musa Bin Nusayr school repurposed as a shelter for displaced families — after Israeli airstrikes hit the city overnight and early Sunday morning, The Guardian reported.
“Let us pray for a ceasefire on all war fronts, in Ukraine, the Holy Land, in all the Middle East and the entire world, at Christmas,” the Holy Father urged.
Pope Francis decried all violent attacks in “tortured Ukraine, particularly those that have damaged schools, hospitals, and churches throughout the Eastern European nation since it was invaded by Russia in 2022.
“May the weapons be silenced and Christmas carols resound!” he insisted on Sunday.
At least 147 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been killed since February 2022, 127 of whom were killed in 2024 alone, according to a BBC report.
Since the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Pope Francis has repeated calls to free prisoners of war and assured the Holy See’s readiness to assist in such efforts.
In September, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin met with Russia’s Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova via video conference to discuss matters including the mutual exchange of soldiers detained in Russia and Ukraine.
Since the 2022 Russian invasion, Pope Francis has met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on four separate occasions, three of which took place in the Vatican.
During the Angelus address, the pope also expressed his concern and closeness for the people of Mozambique who are this month expecting a formal ruling on the outcome of the country’s contested Oct. 9 elections.
“I wish to reiterate my message of hope, peace, and reconciliation to that beloved people,” Francis said. “I pray that dialogue and the quest for the common good, supported by faith and goodwill, may prevail over mistrust and discord.”
Since October, dozens of people have been killed in violent protests in the East African nation. Amnesty International reported more than 30 people were killed in a single week earlier this month.
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Planet Earth and humankind with its companion species are thirsting for peace, here, there, and everywhere. May the Prince of Peace fill our hearts and minds with love and peace.
We must surely hope and pray, but if only we now weren’t living through the real Dark Ages…Three points:
FIRST, back in the so-called “Dark Ages” (our “chronological snobbery,” C.S. Lewis), Europe practiced the civilizing and religious Truce of God between combatants. Dating from a Church council in France in 975, the Truce of God restricted warfare, with holidays assigned to several dates and seasons of the year having Christian religious significance like Christmas or Easter. In 1139 the Second Council of the Lateran imposed the penalty of excommunication for breaking the Truce. While the medieval Truce was to be applied only between Christian combatants, it surfaces in crusader history in the Holy Land. The opposing armies often found interludes for gift exchanges and tournaments.
SECOND, the Christian Truce of God finds a counterpart in ancient Arabia. Following the peaceful era of the Elephant, recorded later in the Qur’an (“The Elephant” is Q 105).
“ . . . it was an ancient Constitution through all Arabia [the pre-Islamic “Age of Ignorance”], to hold four months of the Year sacred, in which all War was to cease . . . as soon as any of those Sacred Months began, they all immediately desisted, and taking off the heads from their Spears, and laying aside all other Weapons of War, had intercourse, and intermingled together, as if there had been perfect Peace and Friendship between them, without any fear of each other; so that if a Man should meet on those Months him that had slain his Father, or his Brother, he dusrt not meddle with him, how violent soever his Hatred or Revenge might prompt him to it” (Humphrey Prideaux, “The Life of Mahomet,” London, 1695/1718, with reprints).
THIRD, sadly, in today’s Dark Ages (drones and laser guided missiles rather than long bows and trebuchets), the conflicted world is remotely likely to respond more to the political demands of a secular president-elect than to even a prayerful pope; and, possibly (?), the imam of el-Azhar who might also appeal more to universal and inborn Natural Law (the Hadith’s “fitrah”?), than to a “pluralism” of significantly incongruent and not-inborn world religions.