By Carol Glatz | Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY — Violence is not the way to fix a broken world, rather it only benefits a handful of “warlords” who profit off of human bloodshed, Pope Francis said.
“I think that today, sin manifests itself with all of its destructive force in wars, different forms of violence and mistreatment, and in the abandonment of those who are most fragile,” he said in an interview with the Italian daily La Repubblica April 13.
Those who pay the price for all this violence and malice are “always the least, the defenseless,” he said.
He said he appealed once again for peace in “this world subjugated by arms traffickers who make money off the blood of men and women.”
When asked toward what ends all these many wars are being waged, the pope said, “I always ask myself the same thing. For what purpose?”
The only thing war seems to achieve is to trigger acts of revenge and a spiral of “lethal conflicts that benefit only a few ‘warlords,'” he said.
People are forced to flee or emigrate with considerable suffering, he said. Huge amounts of valuable resources are taken away from the daily needs of young people, families in difficulty, the elderly, the sick and the great majority of the world’s inhabitants with the money going to the military, he added.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” the pope said, “violence is not the remedy for our broken world.”