During a Vatican audience, the Pope emphasized the need for peace, dignity and hope for the peoples, and highlighted the availability of the Holy See to facilitate meetings between enemies.
Pope Leo XIV exhorted the world leaders on Wednesday to sit down and negotiate to “silence the weapons” and offered the Vatican’s mediation to all belligerent parts.
“The Holy See is available for enemies to meet and look in the eye,” he said when speaking at the Vatican hearing to the representatives of the 23 Catholic churches of the East.
The Pope said it is necessary that “peoples can rediscover hope and dignity to which they are entitled,” the dignity of peace.
“The people want peace and I, with my heart, say to the leaders of the people: We find, we speak, negotiate! War is never inevitable, weapons can and should be silenced, because they do not solve problems but increase them.”
Oriental churches know “firsthand the horrors of war”
Leo XIV said in the Paul VI room, before thousands of people who moved to the jubilee of countries such as Syria, Ukraine, Lebanon and Iraq, which the oriental churches know “firsthand the horrors of war.”
“To the point that Pope Francis has called martyrs to your churches,” he said, quoted by the Spanish news agency Efe.
“It’s true: from the Holy Land to Ukraine, from Lebanon to Syria, from the Middle East to Tigray [Etiópia] And to the Caucasus, so much violence. “
“The church will not get tired of repeating: ‘May weapons shut up'”
The Pope, applauded by the hearing, said the horror of war and “of the massacres of so many young lives” should cause indignation, “because in the name of military conquest people die.” He asked him to pray for peace, which he described as “reconciliation, forgiveness, courage to turn the page and start over.”
“For this peace to differ, I will do everything within my reach (…) The Church will not get tired of repeating, ‘May weapons shut up’. “
Leo XIV said that others are not enemies, but humans, “they are not bad people to hate, but people with dialogue with.” AND He asked him to escape “the typical manichaeist visions of violent narratives, which divide the world between good and bad.”
Leo XIV prayed for the oriental and Latin Christians, who, especially in the Middle East, “resist their lands, stronger than the temptation to abandon them.”
He also launched a new appeal to be given to Christians the opportunity to remain where they live “with all the rights necessary for a safe existence.”
