Pope to La Repubblica newspaper: ‘World must stop
lords of war’
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis granted an interview with
the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, published Thursday morning, in which he
spoke about why he always celebrates the Mass of the Lord's Supper with
prisoners and about the current “terrible world war being fought piecemeal”.
This year, the Holy Father celebrates the Mass of the Lord’s
Supper on Holy Thursday at the Paliano Detention Centre, near Rome, where he
will once again wash the feet of prisoners on the margins of society.
The Pope said his decision to continue to celebrate the In
Coena Domini Mass with prisoners “is a duty which comes from my heart.”
“The Gospel passage of the last judgment says, ‘I was a
prisoner and you visited me’. This is Jesus’ task for each of us, but
especially for the bishop who is the father of all.”
Example of Cardinal Agostino Casaroli
When asked who had taught him this lesson, Pope Francis
cited the example of the late Cardinal Agostino Casaroli.
He said that even when he was Vatican Secretary of State,
Cardinal Casaroli continued to carry out his pastoral activity at Rome’s youth
detention facility, Casal del Marmo, unbeknownst to those to whom he was
ministering.
“Every Saturday evening he would disappear: ‘He’s resting’,
they would say. He would take the bus, with his work briefcase, and would stay
to confess young people and play with them. They called him ‘Don Agostino’;
they didn’t really know who he was. When John XXIII received him after his
first visit to Eastern Europe during his diplomatic mission at the height of
the Cold War, he asked him at the end of their meeting: ‘Tell me, do you still
visit those young people?’ ‘Yes, Holy Father.’ ‘I ask you this favor, never
abandon them.’”
The Holy Father went on to say, “At times, a certain
hypocrisy pushes us to see prisoners only as people who have messed up, for
whom the only path is prison. But, we all have the possibility to make
mistakes.”
World must stop lords of war
Turning to the theme of war and violence, Pope Francis said,
“I think today sin is manifested with all its destructive force in war, in
different forms of violence and mistreatment, and in the rejection of the most
fragile.”
He said the last century “was devastated by two deadly world
wars and knew the threat of nuclear war and a large number of other conflicts,
while today, unfortunately, we are experiencing a terrible world war fought
piecemeal.”
The Holy Father told his interviewer, “The world must stop
the lords of war, because those who suffer most are the last and the helpless.”
“I always ask myself,” he said, “Does violence allow us to
obtain long-lasting objectives? Are not the results only a further escalation
of reprisals and a spiral of lethal conflicts, which benefit only ‘a few lords
of war?’”
Pope Francis said, “Responding to violence with violence
leads – in the best of cases – to forced migration and inhuman suffering... In
the worst of cases, in can bring the physical and spiritual death of many
people, if not of all.”
Prejudices close one to truth and freedom
In conclusion, the Pope returned to his evening visit to
prisoners at the Paliano Detention Centre.
“When we remain closed in our own prejudices, when we are
slaves to idols of a false well-being, when we move within ideological frames,
or when we absolutize economic laws which crush people, in reality we are doing
nothing other than remaining within the cramped cell walls of individualism and
self-sufficiency, deprived of truth which generates freedom. And to point the
finger against someone who has messed up cannot become an alibi for hiding
one’s own contradictions.”
(Devin Sean Watkins)
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