Scottish Catholic Observer

Pope Benedict XVI urged the international community to suspend military action and seek to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis.

The African bishops said: “We know that war solves nothing, and when it breaks out, it is just as uncontrollable as the explosion of a nuclear reactor! The first victims are always the poorest and most disadvantaged.”

Bishop Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli, said that the Holy Father’s appeal for peace was ‘wonderful news’ and gave  ‘great comfort.’

International military intervention in Libya was sanctioned following reports of ‘massacres’ of the protestors and bombings of the rebel forces by Colonel Gaddafi. NATO took command of the operation this week.

Archbishop Mennini, the new Apostolic Nuncio to Britain, represented the Vatican at an international conference on Libya held in London on Tuesday.

The Pope has also voiced his concern over an increase in violence in other countries in the Middle East, including Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Syria and Bahrain.

The horrors of war were brought home again this week when the Pope prayed at the memorial to victims of a 1944 massacre that was one of the worst atrocities by German occupiers in Italy during the Second World War. He visited the Ardeatine Caves on the outskirts of Rome to mark the anniversary of the killings of 335 civilians in Rome to avenge an attack by resistance fighters that killed 33 members of a Nazi military police unit.

During his visit, the Pope denounced what he called the ‘abominable’ legacy of violence unleashed during war. A poignant reminder of the need for prayers for peace, as is the insight into Christian persecution given in this week’s edition by John Pontifex from Aid to the Church in Need, author of the charity’s Persecuted and Forgotten? report.