AS PASTORS, WE MUST BRING PEACE AND USE THE LANGUAGE OF JESUS, NOT POLITICS
The Holy See Press Office early this evening confirmed today’s video conference between Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, also confirming the presence for the video conference of Cardinal Koch and Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion.
The conversation had as its focus the war in Ukraine and the role of Christians and their pastors in doing everything to make peace prevail. (vatican photo)
Pope Francis thanked the patriarch for this encounter, motivated by the desire to indicate, as pastors of their people, a path for peace and to pray for the gift of peace and for arms to cease. The Church, said the Pope together with the Patriarch, “must never use the language of politics, but only the language of Jesus. We are pastors of the same holy people who believe in God, in the most Holy Trinity, in the Holy Mother of God: and for this reason we must be united in our effort to help bring peace, to help those who suffer, to search for paths of peace, to stop weapons.”
Both underlined the exceptional importance of the negotiating process underway because, as the Pope said, “those who pay the price of war are the people, they are the Russian soldiers and the people who are bombed and die.”
As pastors, continued the Pope, “we have the duty to be close to and to help all people who suffer for the war. Once, people have spoken in both our churches of holy wars or of just wars. Today we can no longer speak like this. What has developed is a Christian conscience of the importance of peace. And, together with the Patriarch, he stressed “how churches are called to contribute and to strengthen peace and justice.” Pope Francis concluded: “wars are always unjust because those who pay are the people of God. Our hearts can only cry in the face of the children, of the women killed, of all the victims of war. War is never the path to take. The Spirit who unites us asks us as pastors to help the people suffering for the war.”
Joan's Rome 