Stop wars ‘while there is still time,’ pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Wars are destroying the world, and religious leaders must join together to urge their governments to “stop while there is still time,” Pope Francis said.

“If others continue to make war, together we can work for peace,” the pope said in a message Sept. 24 to religious leaders gathered in Paris for the closing ceremony of the international “Imagining Peace” meeting organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio.

With the leaders gathered in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, the pope noted how the church “after the tragic fire, is about to reopen its doors for prayer. How much we need to pray for peace! The risk that the many conflicts in our world, rather than ceasing, will dangerously spread, is all too real.”

The Sant’Egidio Community has sponsored an interreligious meeting for peace each year since St. John Paul II held the first in Assisi, Italy, in 1986.

Pope Francis quoted his predecessor’s final talk that day, which highlighted “the intrinsic link between an authentic religious attitude and the great good of peace.”

Gestures of peace and friendship between followers of different religious can “shatter the fatal chains of divisions inherited from history or spawned by modern ideologies,” St. John Paul had said.

Pope Francis prayed that the meeting in Paris would help “all believers to rediscover their vocation to nurture fraternity between peoples in our time. All too often in the past, religions were used to fuel conflicts and wars. The danger of this continues, even in our own day.”

“Woe to those who try to drag God into taking sides in wars!” Pope Francis said.

Religious leaders and believers of all faiths need to meet, “to weave bonds of fraternity and to allow ourselves to be guided by the divine inspiration present in every faith in order to join in ‘imagining peace’ among all peoples,” he said.

“In a world at risk of being fragmented by conflicts and wars,” he said, “the efforts made by believers are invaluable for holding out visions of peace and fostering fraternity and peace among peoples everywhere.”

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