ROME — Pope Francis continued his crusade against the Russian war on Ukraine Saturday, urging combatants to stop “in the name of God.”
“Never war!” the pontiff tweeted, attaching memes of himself with his text in Ukrainian as well as Russian.
“Think first about the children, about those who are deprived of the hope for a dignified life: dead or wounded children, orphans, children who play with the remnants of war… In the name of God, stop!” he declared.
On the same day, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, released an interview with Vatican News, in which he called the Russian war on Ukraine a “barbarity” and a “folly.”
The position of the Holy See is “a strong ‘no’ to war; war is madness, it must be stopped,” the cardinal declared. “We ask, appealing to the consciences of all that the fighting cease immediately.”
Parolin also denounced Russian attacks on civilians, referencing the suffering of the innocent victims of the war.
“We have before our eyes the terrible images coming from Ukraine,” Parolin declared. “The victims among the civilians, women, elderly people, and defenseless children who have paid with their lives for the folly of war.”
“The anguish grows as we see cities with gutted houses, no electricity, sub-zero temperatures, lack of food and medicine, as well as millions of refugees, mostly women and children, fleeing the bombs,” he said.