ROME — Pope Francis said Thursday that military defence and sanctions are not the solution to Russia’s war on Ukraine, but rather a new mentality following “Gandhi’s school” of non-violence.
“I think for those of you who belong to my generation it is unbearable to see what has happened and is happening in Ukraine,” the pontiff told a coalition of women’s groups gathered in the Vatican.
Unfortunately, “this is the result of the old logic of power that still dominates the so-called geopolitics,” he said. “The history of the last 70 years proves it: regional wars have never been lacking; this is why I said that we were in the Third World War in small pieces, a little everywhere; up to this one, which has a greater dimension and threatens the whole world.”
“But the basic problem is the same,” he continued, “we continue to rule the world as a ‘chessboard,’ where the powerful study the moves to extend dominance to the detriment of others.”
The pope went on to propose that a new logic is needed to end this war and prevent future ones, exchanging the logic of arms and power for a culture of “care,” “hospitality,” and “being close.”
“The real answer therefore are not other weapons, other sanctions,” he proposed. “I was ashamed when I read that I don’t know, a group of states have pledged to spend two per cent, I believe, or two per thousand of GDP on arms purchases, as a response to what is happening now. Madness!”
The real solution “is not other weapons, other sanctions, other political-military alliances, but another approach, a different way of governing the now globalized world — not showing the teeth, as now — one way different than set international relations,” Francis declared.
“The model of treatment is already in place, thank God, but unfortunately it is still subject to that of the economic-technocratic-military power,” he added.
Francis said that the necessary change of mentality follows the school of Jesus, who taught of small beginnings, as well as “Gandhi’s school, who led a people to freedom on the path of non-violence.”
In this task of conversion from power to care, women have a central role to play, he asserted: “women who have cultivated and safeguarded life; of women who have cured frailties, who have cured wounds, who have cured human and social wounds; of women who have dedicated their minds and hearts to the education of the new generations.”
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