ROME – Pope Leo XIV Sunday issued another fervent plea for peace in the Middle East and in all global hot-spots, urging leaders to open genuine spaces of dialogue amid the mounting human cost of the world’s conflicts.
Speaking to those gathered in a drizzly St. Peter’s Square for his March 22 Sunday Angelus address, the pope said he continued “to follow with dismay the situation in the Middle East as well as other regions of the world lacerated by war and violence.”
“We cannot remain silent before the suffering of so many people, helpless victims of these conflicts,” he said.
War “wounds all of humanity,” he said, saying the death and violence caused by global conflicts “are a scandal for the entire human family, and a cry to the presence of God.”
“I firmly renew my appeal to persevere in prayer so that hostilities cease and that paths of peace finally open, founded on sincere dialogue and in full respect of the dignity of every human person,” he said.
The pope’s appeal comes amid the ongoing U.S.-Israel led war in Iran as leaders spar over conditions for a potential ceasefire. Meanwhile, fighting in Lebanon has increased as the entire region is pulled deeper into violent conflict.
In a recent webinar address for the International Oasis Foundation, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, condemned the war in the Middle East as immoral and unjustified.
“War is first and foremost political and has very material interests, like most wars,” he said, and condemned the use of “pseudo-religious language, which speaks not of God, but of ourselves” to justify it.
The remark was in reference to recent comments from U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who during a briefing quoted Psalm 144 to invoke a divine blessing on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran.
“The abuse and manipulation of God’s name to justify this and any other war is the gravest sin we can commit at this time,” Pizzaballa said, saying, “as believers (…) we need to say that no, there are no new crusades.”
“If God is present in this war, he is among those who are dying, who are suffering, who are in pain, who are oppressed in various ways, throughout the Middle East,” he said.
During his Angelus address, Pope Leo pointed to the day’s Gospel reading, which recounts Jesus’s raising of Lazarus from the dead.
Jesus, in raising Lazarus, tells his sister Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
In his address, he focused on the day’s Gospel reading in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, telling his sister Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
As Holy Week draws near, the this passage, the pope said, is an invitation for believers “to relive the events of the Lord’s Passion — the entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the trial, the crucifixion, the burial — so that we may grasp their most authentic meaning and open ourselves to the gift of grace they contain.”
God, he said, conquered death through his own sacrifice and offers salvation through baptism.
Pope Leo said grace is therefore present throughout the world, “which seems to constantly search for novelty and change.”
It searches restlessly “even at the cost of sacrificing important things — time, energy, values, affections — as if fame, material goods, entertainment and fleeting relationships could fill our hearts or make us immortal,” he said.
This, the pope said, is a sign of humanity’s “longing for the infinite” and the need within the human heart that cannot be satisfied “by passing things.”
“Nothing finite can quench our inner thirst, for we are made for God, and we find no peace until we rest in him,” he said, quoting Saint Augustine’s famed Confessions.
Jesus’s raising of Lazarus from the dead, the pope said, is an invitation for believers “to listen to this profound need and, with the power of the Holy Spirit, to free our hearts from habits, conditioning and ways of thinking which, like boulders, shut us away in the tombs of selfishness, materialism, violence and superficiality.”
“In these places there is no life, but only confusion, dissatisfaction and loneliness,” he said.
Like he did for Lazarus, Jesus calls each person to ‘come out’ of their tombs, “to emerge from these cramped spaces, renewed by his grace, to walk in the light of love, as new women and men, capable of hoping and loving, without calculation and without measure, according to the model of his infinite charity,” he said.
Pope Leo closed his address praying that the Virgin Mary would intercede for believers as Holy Week approaches, so they can live the moment “with her faith, her trust and her fidelity.”
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