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POPE Francis made an impassioned plea for peace and called for people to accept each other as brothers during his New Year address. The 266th pontiff told tens of thousands at St Peter’s Square that many people were indifferent to violence and war and this attitude “had to stop”. The 77-year-old urged the world to listen to the “cry for peace” from people who were “oppressed” by suffering.
The Pope was addressing crowds at the Vatican on a day the Catholic church dedicates to the promotion of the world peace.
He said: “What is happening in the heart of man? What is happening in the heart of humanity?
“It’s time to stop.”
Pope Francis interrupted his prepared speech to express his impatience with violence in the world.
He said he had received a letter from a man that had lamented the “many tragedies and wars in the world.”
Pope Francis said: “I, too, believe that it will be good for us to stop ourselves in this path of violence and search for peace. The pontiff said the world cannot be “indifferent and immobile” to the suffering in the world and society needs to be more “just and united”.
Pope Francis added: “We are all children of one heavenly father, we belong to the same human family and we share a common destiny,.
“This brings a responsibility for each to work so that the world becomes a community of brothers who respect each other, accept each other in one’s diversity, and takes care of one another.”
Meanwhile, the Pope has denounced discrimination against Christians, saying such “injustice” must be eliminated. In delivering his traditional noon prayer on Boxing Day in the Vatican City, Pope Francis said more people were suffering from discrimination now than in the early times of the Church.
The Pope was addressing thousands of people in St Peter’s Square on the day the Roman Catholic Church commemorates St Stephen, its first martyr.
He asked the crowd for a moment of silent prayer for “Christians who are unjustly accused and are subjected to every type of violence”.
Francis, celebrating his first Christmas season as pope, said “limitations and discrimination” against Christians was taking place not only in countries that do not grant full religious freedom but also where “on paper, freedom and human rights are protected. This injustice should be denounced and eliminated,” he said.
Francis did not name any countries but the Vatican has long urged Saudi Arabia, the site of Islam’s holiest places, to lift a ban on Christians worshiping in public.
This year there have been a number of incidents of intolerance and attacks against minority Christians in Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria and other countries where their rights are guaranteed by law.
Francis, departing from his prepared text, said he was sure that Christians suffering from either discrimination or violence were “more numerous today than in the early times of the Church”.
In the past, the Vatican has also expressed concern over what former Pope Benedict called “sophisticated forms of hostility” against Christians in rich countries, such as restricting use of religious symbols in public places. — AP
Online Reporter
Bongani Ndlovu