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Leading Holy Land Franciscan: ‘We are in the grip of a bellicose madness’
March 19, 2026
» Continue to this story on Vatican News (Italian)
CWN Editor's Note: Father Francesco Patton, O.F.M., the Custos (superior) of the Franciscan Holy Land province from 2016 to 2025, said that “we are in the grip of a bellicose madness, the notion that everything can be resolved through force and weaponry.”
Speaking from Jordan, Father Patton said that “I think daily of my confreres living in Lebanon—in Beirut and elsewhere, both in the south and the north—who are currently being tested beyond measure.”
“The convent in Tyre has been converted into a refugee camp, while those in Beirut are desperately striving to assist the civilian population, which has reached its breaking point; there are now one million displaced persons out of a total population of six million,” Father Patton added.
The Franciscan friar warned that “in the aftermath of every recent Middle Eastern conflict, new forms of terrorism have emerged, giving rise to new organizations, such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hezbollah, and Hamas. All of these were born out of conflicts in the Middle East that were left politically unresolved—the bitter fruit of attempts to impose military solutions upon conflicts that, in reality, required a different approach.”
The above note supplements, highlights, or corrects details in the original source (link above). About CWN news coverage.
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