Pope Francis: We are in the midst of a Third World War

Business Insider: 13. September 2014

Pope Francis walks inside the Austro-Hungarian cemetery at Fogliano in Redipuglia. (September 13 2014).

REDIPUGLIA Italy (Reuters) - Pope Francis said on Saturday the spate of conflicts around the globe today were effectively a "piecemeal" Third World War, condemning the arms trade and "plotters of terrorism" sowing death and destruction.

"Humanity needs to weep and this is the time to weep," Francis said in the homily of a Mass during a visit to Italy's largest war memorial, a large, Fascist-era monument where more than 100,000 Italian and ally soldiers who died in World War One are buried.

The Pope began his brief visit to northern Italy by first praying in a nearby, separate cemetery for some 15,000 soldiers from five nations of the Austro-Hungarian empire which were on the losing side of the Great War that broke out 100 years ago.

"War is madness," he said in his homily before the massive, sloping granite memorial, made of 22 steps on the side of hill with three crosses at the top.

"Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction," he said.

In the past few months, Francis has made repeated appeals for an end to conflicts in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Gaza and parts of Africa.

"War is irrational; its only plan is to bring destruction: it seeks to grow by destroying," he said. "Greed, intolerance, the lust for power. These motives underlie the decision to go to war and they are too often justified by an ideology ...," he said.

Part of enormous Italian soldiers cemetery in Redipuglia.

In his homily, read at a somber service to thousands of people braving the rain and which included the hauntingly funereal sound of a solitary bugle, Francis condemned "plotters of terrorism" but did not elaborate.

Some 20 days earlier, on his return journey from his visit to Korea in August, Pope Francis lamented the growing number of conflicts across the globe, saying that we “are now in World War III”. He told journalists on board the papal plane: “Today we are in a world at war everywhere. A man said to me, ‘Father, we are in World War III, but spread out in small pockets everywhere.’ He was right.”

We should be “frightened at the level of cruelty that has become the norm”, Francis continued. “Today children do not count.  Once they spoke about a conventional war, today that does not count. I’m not saying that conventional wars were good things, but today a bomb is sent and it kills the innocent, the guilty, children, women – they kill everybody. No! We must stop and think a little about the level of cruelty at which we have arrived. This should frighten us.”

The Pope went on to condemn the way torture had become “almost ordinary”. “I tell Catholics that to torture a person is a mortal sin, a grave sin. But it’s more, it’s a sin against humanity,” he said.