“No to the winds of war, peace cannot be built with weapons” –

No to the “winds of war” that are ever stronger “blowing over Europe” and the “Mediterranean”. Peace as the only “new path” to follow. Pope Francis’ Easter – stained with blood from the news coming from the Middle East and Ukraine – is once once more a plea to world leaders and peoples to choose “life in the midst of death”, “reconciliation in the midst of hatred” , the “brotherhood in the midst of enmity”. “Do not give in to the logic of weapons and rearmament”, states Bergoglio from the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, addressing the thousands of faithful present in the square and those connected via radio, TV and Internet.

Video on this topic

“Peace is never built with weapons, but by holding out hands and opening hearts”, the Pope’s message. The Pontiff looks to Kiev and Moscow, inviting them to make a concrete gesture of détente: the “general exchange of all prisoners between Russia and Ukraine”. “All for all”, is the invitation, hoping for “respect for the principles of international law” between Vladimir Putin’s army and that of Volodymyr Zelensky. Almost identical message aimed at the increasingly complicated Middle Eastern scenario. “Immediate ceasefire in the Strip”, possibility of access for “humanitarian aid to Gaza” and prompt “release of the hostages kidnapped on 7 October”, is Bergoglio’s appeal.

Video on this topic

Who recalled how the hostilities at the border of the Jewish nation are also worsening the internal Lebanese situation, “a land of encounter, coexistence and pluralism”. Words that echo in the Easter message while Hamas announces that there have been 32,782 Palestinian victims since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, hundreds in the two weeks of the IDF siege of Al Shifa hospital alone, and the families of the Israeli hostages await their return of their loved ones for almost 5 months. “Let us not allow the ongoing hostilities to continue to have serious repercussions on the civilian population, now exhausted, and above all on children. How much suffering we see in the eyes of children, they have forgotten how to smile in that land of war”, the Pope’s warning, ” with their gaze they ask us ‘why?’. Why so much death? Why so much destruction? War is always an absurdity and a defeat.”