In some of his forceful language to date, Pope Francis spoke out against war this morning, calling it “madness.”The Pope pronounced these words during the homily at Mass while visiting the military shrine of Redipuglia in commemoration of the centenary of the beginning of World War I. He came to pray for the fallen of all wars, the first Pope to visit the site since John Paul II came 22 years ago on the evening of May 3, 1992 to commemorate the sacrifice and suffering of thousands of young victims of the First World War who rest in the military shrine.
Pope Francis urged the world to shed its apathy in the face of what he sees as a third world war, waged piecemeal “with crimes, massacres and destruction” in different parts of the world, during his homily at the foot of a Fascist-era World War I monument near the Slovene border.
Saturday's visit was infused with intensely personal meaning. The pope's grandfather fought in Italy's 1915-18 offensive against the Austro-Hungarian empire, surviving to impress upon the future pope the horror of war.
A hundred thousand soldiers, of which 60,000 remain unnamed, died in the trenches of Carso and the Isonzo.
“Whereas God carries forward the work of creation, war destroys,” the Pope declared. “War,” he said, “ruins everything, even the bonds between brothers. War is irrational; its only plan is to bring destruction.”
War is “too often justified by an ideology,” the Pope said, and where this is lacking, people revert to Cain’s defense: “What does it matter to me? Am I my brother’s keeper?”
“Here lie many victims. Today, we remember them. There are tears, there is sadness. From this place we remember all the victims of every war,” the Pope said.
He attributed the cause of much of the bloodshed to behind-the-scenes interests: “geopolitical strategies, lust for money and power, and… the manufacture and sale of arms.”
The Pope ended his discourse with a personal appeal. “With the heart of a son, a brother, a father,” he said, “I ask each of you, indeed for all of us, to have a conversion of heart: to move on from ‘What does it matter to me?’, to tears: for each one of the fallen of this ‘senseless massacre,’ for all the victims of the mindless wars, in every age. Humanity needs to weep, and this is the time to weep.” Reported by Breitbart 2 hours ago.