Pope Francis has used a First World War Centenary pilgrimage to warn of the dangers of a third global conflict.
Visiting Italy’s Redipuglia War Memorial, the Pope appealed for the victims of every war to be remembered.
He said: “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…
“Greed, intolerance, the lust for power…. These motives underlie the decision to go to war, and they are too often justified by an ideology.”
Almost 110,000 Italian soldiers are commemorated at Redipuglia, the country’s largest military memorial. 14,000 Austro-Hungarian troops are buried in a cemetery nearby.
Pope Francis, the son of italian immigrants to Argentina, condemned war as madness and the ruin of everything during his pilgrimage on September 13th 2014.
His Italian grandfather served as a soldier in the First World War.
Italy entered the war on the Allied side in 1915, fighting the Austro-Hungarian Empire on its Alpine borders for three years.
Redipuglia, near today’s border with Slovenia, lay at the eastern end of the front where a series of battles was fought along the Isonzo River.
Source: Vatican Press Office
Images: Wikipedia/declared as released into public domain
Posted by: Peter Alhadeff, Centenary News