VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis once again addressed the subject of the war in Ukraine during his general audience, calling the conflict, “a blasphemous outrage against God,” Vatican sources said.

 "The armed aggression of these days, like every war, represents an outrage to God, a blasphemous betrayal of the Easter Lord, a preference for the meek face of a false god of this world,” said Francis on Wednesday.

 "War is always a human action to lead to the idolatry of power," added the pontiff.

 "The peace of Jesus does not dominate others, it is never an armed peace, never. The weapons of the Gospel are prayer, tenderness, forgiveness and gratuitous love for one's neighbour.”

 The pope said that "a great story by Dostoevsky, ‘The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,’” a soliloquy within the Russian’s author’s 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov, is still relevant today. The character Ivan questions his brother Alexei, a novice monk, about the possibility of a personal and benevolent God and presents ideas about human nature and freedom in a fundamentally ambiguous way.

 The presidents of the Conference of European Churches (KEK), and of the Commission of European Catholic Bishops, pastor Christian Krieger and Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, sent a letter addressed to the presidents of Russia and Ukraine Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday calling for an Easter ceasefire in Ukraine from midnight on April 17 to midnight on April 24.

ln