Pope Francis continues to beg for peace in the Holy Land, and around the world. Today, October 22, after praying the midday Angelus, he said:
Once more my thoughts turn to what is happening in Israel and Palestine. I am very concerned, grieved. I pray and I am close to all those who are suffering: the hostages, the wounded, the victims and their relatives. I think of the serious humanitarian situation in Gaza and I am saddened that the Anglican hospital and the Greek-Orthodox parish have also been hit in recent days. I renew my appeal for spaces to be opened, for humanitarian aid to continue to arrive, and for the hostages to be freed.
War, any war that there is in the world – I also think of tormented Ukraine – is a defeat. War is always a defeat; it is a destruction of human fraternity. Brothers, stop! Stop!
I remind you that next Friday, 27 October, I have proclaimed a day of fasting, prayer, and penance, and that evening at 18.00 in Saint Peter’s Square we will spend an hour in prayer to implore peace in the world.
The Holy Father always speaks strongly about the horror of war.
Brothers and sisters, war does not solve any problem: It sows only death and destruction, foments hate, proliferates revenge. War cancels out the future, it cancels out the future. I urge believers to take just one side in this conflict: that of peace. But not in words – in prayer, with total dedication.
War is, plainly, the work of Satan, he says.
When the devil manages to make us go to war and lights the fire of war, the pope continued, he gets to sit back and relax. “We are the ones who work to destroy each other,” Francis said, as we take up the devil’s work.
“We are the ones who carry on the war, the destruction,” destroying ourselves first, “because we throw love out,” and then destroying others.
