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Catholic World News News Feature

End all wars, Pope pleads July 23, 2007

Pope Benedict XVI issued an impassioned call for an end to all warfare during his Angelus audience on Sunday, July 22.

Speaking from the town square in Lorenzago di Cadore, the mountain town in northern Italy where he is spending his vacation, the Holy Father said that the peaceful surroundings of the Alpine region made him feel "even more intensely" the impact of the news that he received on "the bloody confrontations and episodes of violence happening in many parts of the world."

The Pope did not mention any specific conflict in today's world, but he did recall that 90 years ago, his predecessor Pope Benedict XV pleaded for an end to World War I, and "had the courage to assert that that conflict was a pointless carnage." That same message has subsequently been echoed by other Pontiffs, he remarked, mentioning in particular the speeches to the UN by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, with each urging, "Never again war!" "From this peaceful place in which the horrors of 'pointless carnage' are felt even more forcefully as unacceptable, I renew the call to more tenaciously adhere to the law, to vehemently refuse the arms race and the temptation to face new situations with old systems," Pope Benedict XVI continued at his Sunday audience.

Warfare, the Pope reflected, transforms and defaces the earth that God has entrusted to man for cultivation. In times of war, he said, "areas of hell have been opened in this stupendous garden of the world."