Scottish Catholic Observer

A ’piecemeal’ Third World War may have already begun, Pope Francis has warned.

He was speaking during a visit to Italy’s largest military cemetery last Sunday, where he was commemorating the centenary of the First World War.

“War is madness,” the Pope said at a memorial to 100,000 Italian soldiers at Redipuglia cemetery near Slovenia. “When will we learn this lesson? We must understand that hatred and evil are defeated with forgiveness and good, and to understand that responding with war only augments evil and death.”

The Holy Father said it is believed that more than 8 million soldiers and 7 million civilians died during the First World War—a four-year-long conflict that began 100 years ago.

The number of so many lost lives ‘lets us see how much war is insanity’ the Pope said at his morning visit to Italy’s largest war memorial—Redipuglia, a town in northeast Italy near the border with Slovenia.

The memorial made of enormous stone steps leading to three bronze crosses pays homage to more than 100,000 Italian soldiers, while a nearby military cemetery is the final resting place for some 15,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers, all of whom lost their lives in nearby battlefields. The laid a floral wreath at the cemetery, celebrated Mass at the memorial, and prayed for all victims of all wars.

The most shocking aspect of so much bloodshed is the continued legacy of indifference, the Pope said. Being indifferent began with Cain murdering his brother Abel and then rebuking God for asking where his now dead brother was, replying: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Above the tombs of so many dead, Pope Francis said, ‘hovers the sneering motto of war’—Cain’s complaint of: “What do I care?”

“All these people, here in eternal rest, they had plans, had dreams, but their lives were broken,” the Holy Father said. “Why? Because humanity said: ‘What do I care?’”

Today the world is still up in arms with a kind of ‘World War III [waged] in bits and pieces’ with criminal acts, massacres and destruction, the Pope said.

“Tears. Brothers and sisters, humanity needs to cry, this is the moment to cry,” he added.

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– Read the full version of this story in Sept 19 edition of the SCO in parishes from Friday.