Pope Leo XIV promised on Wednesday to make “all efforts” to work for peace in the Middle East and Ukraine and actively promote spirituality. In that sense, he urged the world’s leaders to be negotiated to “shut up the weapons” and said that “the Holy See is available for enemies to be and look into each other.”
In his speech to the representatives of the oriental churches for his jubilee, the American pontiff said that the people “want peace and I, with the heart in their hand, tell the leaders of the people: let’s gather, let’s talk, negotiate! The war is never inevitable, weapons can and should silence, because they do not solve the problems, but that they increase them.”
The Pope asks for “courage to turn page”
The appeal arrives on the eve of the meeting that tomorrow they plan to keep representatives of Russia and Ukraine in Turkey, without the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has still clarified if he will travel to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodimir Zelenski, who has shown his willingness to keep a face to face with him.
Pope Robert Prevost stood out in the classroom Paul VI before the thousands of people arriving for this jubilee from countries such as Syria, Ukraine, Lebanon or Iraq, that the Eastern Churches know “first hand the horrors of war, to the point that Pope Francis has called your martyrs”.
“It is true: from the Holy Land to Ukraine, from Lebanon to Syria, from the Middle East to Tigray and the Caucasus, how much violence! And above all this horror, above the massacres of so many young lives, which should cause indignation, because in the name of the military conquest people dies,” said Leo XIV, who received the applause of the assistants.
He then asked to pray “for this peace, which is reconciliation, forgiveness, the courage to turn page and start over.”
Leo XIV offers the Vatican for negotiations
“For this peace to extend, I will do everything possible,” he said before adding that “the Holy See is available for enemies to be and look into the eyes, so that the hope and dignity they deserve, the dignity of peace is returned to people.”
He stressed that “whoever sows peace will go down in history, not who reaps victims; because others are not enemies but human beings: not bad people to hate, but people to dialogue” and urged to flee “from the Manicheas visions typical of the violent narratives, who divide the world between good and bad.”
“The Church will not tire of repeating: to shut up weapons,” he launched.
Leo XIV also prayed for Christians, Orientals and Latinos, who especially in the Middle East, “persevere and resist in their lands, stronger than the temptation to abandon them.”
And he made a new appeal so that Christians “should be given the opportunity, not only in word, to remain in their lands with all the necessary rights for a safe existence.”
Source: Ambito
