Pope reiterates desire for peace in Palestine during Angelus address

 VATICAN CITY - “Dear ones, I appreciate your initiative and many other things that throughout the Church express closeness to the brothers and sisters who suffer in that martyred land. With you and with the shepherds in the Holy Land, I repeat, there is no future based on violence, forced exile, revenge. People need peace, and those who truly love them work for peace," Pope Leo XIV declared on Sunday.

 Pope Leo XIV thus addressed the representatives of various Catholic associations committed to solidarity with the population of the Gaza Strip, overlooking St. Peter's Square for the Angelus on Sunday, 21 Sept.. "One day we will be called to account for how we have administered ourselves, our assets and the resources of the earth, both before God and before men, society and above all those who will come after us," he added.

 Shortly before, during the mass in the Church of Sant'Anna in the Vatican, he had encouraged the faithful "to persevere with hope in a time seriously threatened by war. Entire peoples are now crushed by violence and even more so by a shameless indifference, which abandons them to a fate of misery," he said during the homily.

 "In the face of these dramas, we do not want to be submissive, but to announce with words and deeds that Jesus is the Saviour of the world, the One who frees us from all evil - he added - His Spirit converts our hearts so that, nourished by the Eucharist, the supreme treasure of the Church, we can become witnesses of charity and peace."

 As for politicians, "today in particular the Church prays that the rulers of the nations are free from the temptation to use wealth against man, transforming it into weapons that destroy peoples and monopolies that humiliate workers. Those who serve God become free from wealth, but those who serve wealth remain slaves! Those who seek justice transform wealth into a common good; those who seek domination transform the common good into the prey of their own greed."

 The temptation, according to the pontiff, is this: "Thinking that without God we could still live well, while without wealth we would be sad and afflicted by a thousand necessities. Faced with the test of need we feel threatened, but instead of asking for help with confidence and sharing with fraternity, we are led to calculate, to accumulate, becoming suspicious and distrustful of others. These thoughts transform others into a competitor, a rival, or someone to take advantage of.”

 Jesus, recalled the pope, "puts a very clear alternative between God and wealth, asking us to take a clear and coherent position. 'No servant can serve two masters', therefore 'you cannot serve God and wealth'. This is not a contingent choice, like so many others, nor an option that can be reviewed over time, depending on the situations."

 It is therefore necessary to decide "a real lifestyle - the pope observed - It is a matter of choosing where to place our heart, of clarifying who we sincerely love, who we serve with dedication and what is really our good. That is why Jesus contrasts wealth with God: the Lord speaks this way because he knows that we are indigent creatures, that our life is full of needs. Since we were born, poor and naked, we all need care and affection, a home, food, clothes. The thirst for wealth risks taking the place of God in our heart, when we believe that it is saving our lives, as the dishonest administrator of the parable thinks."

 Pope Leo then emphasised that, as the prophet Amos warns, "those who want to make wealth an instrument of domination can't wait to 'buy the indigent with money', exploiting poverty. On the contrary, God allocates the goods of creation to all - that is the point - Our poverty of creatures then attests to a promise and a bond, of which the Lord takes care of in person. The psalmist describes this provident style: God 'bows down to look at the heavens and on the earth'; He 'raises the weak from the dust, from the rubbish he raises up the poor'."

 And the word of the Lord "does not oppose men in rival classes, but spurs everyone to an inner revolution, a conversion that begins from the heart. Then our hands will be opened: to donate, not to grab. Then our minds will open up: to design a better company, not to find deals at the best price," is the conclusion of the homily.

 Similarly, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the CEI, speaking in Florence at a meeting organised by Pax Christi notes how the news is "tragic, we are in a crisis that shows how much we have not learned the lessons and that he has to ask us what we can do and what we need to do more" for peace, "a question that distresses everyone."

 "We grew up with the idea of disarmament and we are witnessing a choice of rearmament with too few voices expressing criticism. It hurts me that apart from the impudence without problems to face, there is the idea of rearmament with the need for defence. And also the fact that we talk about war and not about defence is not a semantic problem but of vision, and also the fact that the 'para bellum' is the inescapable 'grammar'".

 According to the head of the bishops "entering into this logic means throwing away 80 years and going back. It is not possible not to have a strong place where conflicts can be recomposed, or the fact that no one can count on the international court. We are returning to the logic of the strongest, or of the strongest ones, which has dangerously generated so many conflicts.”

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