Pope Francis explains "...peace among men is an essential good for which we must work hard and plead fervently to God." FULL TEXT
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SPEECH OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS
TO A DELEGATION OF THE EUROPEAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
OF SALAMANCA
Thursday, January 26, 2023
___________________________________________
Eminence,
Dear brothers and sisters:
Thank you for coming, it is a pleasure to welcome you back to this house and to share with you the results of the investigations into the current political and social reality. Rome has been a melting pot of cultures and peoples for thousands of years. The whole world passed through here and merged, a melting pot. Heir to this universal vocation, the See of Peter has always been attentive to the vicissitudes of all peoples, to their efforts and difficulties to achieve a better life, seeking that they achieve the peace that the Lord promised his disciples (cf. Jn 14,26-27).
This peace not only exceeds what we can achieve with purely human means, but also challenges us so that the latter is not based simply on balances of power or on the silencing of the just demands of the least favored. However, peace among men is an essential good for which we must work hard and plead fervently to God. That [is the] attitude of pacifying, [and] peace will be the result.
But that attitude of pacifying always [is] so human but so difficult, because the first reaction we have is to grab the stone and throw it at the other, declare war, and then negotiate. Not! Pacifying is easier, two steps are saved.
Unfortunately, the current situation reminds us of something that is in Fratelli tutti: “Every war leaves the world worse than it found it. War is a failure of politics, a failure of humanity, a shameful surrender, a defeat against the forces of evil” (cf. n. 261).
If we think that in this last century there were three world wars, 14 to 18, 39 to 45 and this current one, which is a world war. How do we understand this? If we think that the most important budget is the manufacture of weapons, and with one year that weapons are not manufactured, the problem of hunger throughout the world is solved. In other words, we already have a warmongering orientation towards destruction, and if we think that today the technique of weapons has reached a point where a single bomb can destroy an entire city like this, what do we expect? It seems that it is not understood where we are walking. That is why the struggle for human understanding and for peace must be tireless, we cannot afford to take vacations from this.
The war is terrible. However, we must not give up, from those ashes that we are seeing today something new can sprout, from this failure we can find a life lesson.
[You have to] read the previous wars. When in 2014 I went to Redipuglia for the centenary, I saw those graves and something stirred inside me, I cried like a child. Every November 2 I go to a cemetery to celebrate. One year I went to Anzio, to the American Cemetery. In Anzio it was one of the landings and I saw the age of the soldiers, 20, 21, 19, 22, and it stirred me. We don't learn. A short time ago — I don't know how long, a couple of years ago — the seventieth [anniversary] of the landing in Normandy was commemorated. Several heads of government got together to commemorate that, which was the beginning of the end of Nazism, that is, the liberation of Europe. But no one remembered that thirty thousand boys remained on the beaches of Normandy, thirty thousand! I think of moms: "a letter, ma'am." Open the letter: "I have the honor to inform you that you are the mother of a hero who has given his life for the country", and a medal. It is the drama of war, when are we going to understand it? On the trip I made to Romania and Slovakia, when I passed through the towns, people were there waving, boys, girls, young married couples, young men, young women, but they are women of a certain age; old men there were almost no: the war. This is very hard. I think we have to react, the war is terrible. And we have to make something new out of this failure, find a life lesson.
And what seems like a defeat and a reason for opprobrium can, like the scandal of the cross, become a victory. I eat? If with our prayer and with our work, our awareness work, we are capable of providing solutions, arousing wills, witnessing that love, fraternity and true humanism that is born from faith defeats hatred, rejection and brutality . Please.
And that is the challenge that you have proposed and I thank you for your desire to contribute from your science valid elements that help everyone to advance along the path of fraternity, along the path of peace, of human unity. God bless you. And thank you for what you're doing, thank you. And let's move on without getting discouraged. Thanks.
TO A DELEGATION OF THE EUROPEAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
OF SALAMANCA
Thursday, January 26, 2023
___________________________________________
Eminence,
Dear brothers and sisters:
Thank you for coming, it is a pleasure to welcome you back to this house and to share with you the results of the investigations into the current political and social reality. Rome has been a melting pot of cultures and peoples for thousands of years. The whole world passed through here and merged, a melting pot. Heir to this universal vocation, the See of Peter has always been attentive to the vicissitudes of all peoples, to their efforts and difficulties to achieve a better life, seeking that they achieve the peace that the Lord promised his disciples (cf. Jn 14,26-27).
This peace not only exceeds what we can achieve with purely human means, but also challenges us so that the latter is not based simply on balances of power or on the silencing of the just demands of the least favored. However, peace among men is an essential good for which we must work hard and plead fervently to God. That [is the] attitude of pacifying, [and] peace will be the result.
But that attitude of pacifying always [is] so human but so difficult, because the first reaction we have is to grab the stone and throw it at the other, declare war, and then negotiate. Not! Pacifying is easier, two steps are saved.
Unfortunately, the current situation reminds us of something that is in Fratelli tutti: “Every war leaves the world worse than it found it. War is a failure of politics, a failure of humanity, a shameful surrender, a defeat against the forces of evil” (cf. n. 261).
If we think that in this last century there were three world wars, 14 to 18, 39 to 45 and this current one, which is a world war. How do we understand this? If we think that the most important budget is the manufacture of weapons, and with one year that weapons are not manufactured, the problem of hunger throughout the world is solved. In other words, we already have a warmongering orientation towards destruction, and if we think that today the technique of weapons has reached a point where a single bomb can destroy an entire city like this, what do we expect? It seems that it is not understood where we are walking. That is why the struggle for human understanding and for peace must be tireless, we cannot afford to take vacations from this.
The war is terrible. However, we must not give up, from those ashes that we are seeing today something new can sprout, from this failure we can find a life lesson.
[You have to] read the previous wars. When in 2014 I went to Redipuglia for the centenary, I saw those graves and something stirred inside me, I cried like a child. Every November 2 I go to a cemetery to celebrate. One year I went to Anzio, to the American Cemetery. In Anzio it was one of the landings and I saw the age of the soldiers, 20, 21, 19, 22, and it stirred me. We don't learn. A short time ago — I don't know how long, a couple of years ago — the seventieth [anniversary] of the landing in Normandy was commemorated. Several heads of government got together to commemorate that, which was the beginning of the end of Nazism, that is, the liberation of Europe. But no one remembered that thirty thousand boys remained on the beaches of Normandy, thirty thousand! I think of moms: "a letter, ma'am." Open the letter: "I have the honor to inform you that you are the mother of a hero who has given his life for the country", and a medal. It is the drama of war, when are we going to understand it? On the trip I made to Romania and Slovakia, when I passed through the towns, people were there waving, boys, girls, young married couples, young men, young women, but they are women of a certain age; old men there were almost no: the war. This is very hard. I think we have to react, the war is terrible. And we have to make something new out of this failure, find a life lesson.
And what seems like a defeat and a reason for opprobrium can, like the scandal of the cross, become a victory. I eat? If with our prayer and with our work, our awareness work, we are capable of providing solutions, arousing wills, witnessing that love, fraternity and true humanism that is born from faith defeats hatred, rejection and brutality . Please.
And that is the challenge that you have proposed and I thank you for your desire to contribute from your science valid elements that help everyone to advance along the path of fraternity, along the path of peace, of human unity. God bless you. And thank you for what you're doing, thank you. And let's move on without getting discouraged. Thanks.
Source: Vatican.va
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