VATICAN CITY – "Those who make war forget humanity,” Pope Francis said, adding that those who make war "put power before everything” and “distance themselves from the common people who want peace.”

 The pope made his remarks speaking during his weekly Angelus address in St Peter’s Square.

 "We have prayed several times that this path would not be taken," continued Francis, who renewed the appeal "to make March 2, Ash Wednesday, a day of prayer and fasting for peace in Ukraine to stay close to suffering of the Ukrainian people, to feel that we are all brothers and to implore the end of the war from God.”

 "In every conflict, ordinary people are the real victims who pay for the follies of war on their own skin. I am thinking of the elderly, of those who seek refuge in these hours, of mothers on the run with their children.”

 “They are brothers and sisters for whom it is urgent to open humanitarian corridors because they must be welcomed.”

  "Those who make war rely on the perverse and violent logic of weapons.”

 “God is with the peacemakers, not with those who use violence. Because those who love peace, as stated in the Italian Constitution, repudiate war as an instrument of offense against the freedom of other peoples and as a means of resolving international disputes.”

 “I see Ukrainian flags,” the Pope said, as he looked at the crowds in front of him in the square. “Praise be to Jesus Christ,” he added in Ukrainian greeting them.

 Francis went to the Russian Embassy on Friday in a departure from protocol unprecedented in living memory, to express his concerns over Russia's invasion of Ukraine to Moscow's ambassador, Sergey Razov.

 Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the pope spent more than half an hour at the embassy, though he did not give any more details.

ln