Offering further confirmation of his ongoing recovery, Pope Francis has written to Italy’s leading newspaper from his hospital room to call for “disarming the earth” in the context of various wars, including Ukraine and Gaza. Source: Crux.
“We must disarm words, to disarm minds and disarm the earth,” Francis wrote. “There is a great need for reflection, for calm, [and] for a sense of complexity.”
The Pope called for special attention to language, calling on journalists especially to “feel the full importance of words”.
“They are never just words: They are facts that build human environments,” he wrote. “They can connect or divide, serve the truth or make use of it.”
Francis addressed his letter, dated March 14, to Luciano Fontana, the editor-in-chief of Corriere della Sera, Italy’s paper of record. The journalist had written to the Pontiff to offer best wishes for his recovery and to invite him to offer a brief reflection on the international situation.
The Pope wrote that his present struggle with double pneumonia, now in his fifth week in the hospital, has given him a deepened perspective on the “absurdity” of war.
“In this moment of illness … war seems even more absurd,” he wrote. “Human fragility, in fact, has the power to make us more lucid with respect to what lasts and what passes, to what makes us live and what kills.
“Human fragility has the power to make us more lucid with respect to what lasts and what passes, to what makes us live and what kills, Perhaps this is why we so often tend to deny limits and to avoid fragile and wounded people: They have the power to question the direction we have chosen, as individuals and as a community.”
The Pope called for reinforced efforts by international organisations and diplomacy, as well as religious groups.
FULL STORY
Pope from hospital backs disarmament while key aide rejects resignation speculation (By John Allen, Crux)
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Pope Francis: War is absurd. Let’s disarm the Earth (Vatican News)
