Warning against an increasingly unpredictable and aggressive “delusion of omnipotence” threatening the globe, Pope Leo XIV has called on world leaders and individuals to empty their hearts and minds of hatred and violence, and to start serving life. Source: OSV News.
“Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life,” he said during a special evening prayer vigil for peace in St Peter’s Basilica on Saturday.
“Those who pray are aware of their own limitations; they do not kill or threaten with death,” he said. “Instead, death enslaves those who have turned their backs on the living God, turning themselves and their own power into a mute, blind and deaf idol, to which they sacrifice every value, demanding that the whole world bend its knee.”
“Let us listen to the voices of children,” who write to him all the time, recounting “all the horror and inhumanity of actions that some adults boast of with pride,” he said.
The vigil, which drew thousands of people inside and outside the basilica, featured the recitation of the glorious mysteries of the Rosary.
Before each mystery was recited, women wearing traditional dress from countries representing the different continents of the world lit small lamps from a flame from the Lamp of Peace from Assisi that was placed below a statue of Our Lady Queen of Peace.
Prayer can move mountains, the Pope said in Italian. “War divides; hope unites. Arrogance tramples upon others; love lifts up. Idolatry blinds us; the living God enlightens.”
It just takes a tiny bit of faith “to face this dramatic hour in history together”, he said.
While the Pope did not mention any one current conflict in his remarks, he did recall St. John Paul II’s fervent efforts and calls for peace during the 2003 invasion of Iraq conducted by the United States with the assistance of a multi-national coalition.
“I make his appeal my own this evening, relevant as it is today,” Pope Leo said, referring to his predecessor’s calls for “No more war.”
FULL STORY
Pope decries horror, inhumanity that ‘some adults boast of with pride’ (By Carol Glatz, OSV News)
