ROME — Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said Saturday that the Russian war on Ukraine is a “barbarity” and called for an immediate ceasefire.
The position of the Holy See is “a strong ‘no’ to war; war is madness, it must be stopped,” Cardinal Parolin said in an interview with Vatican News. “We ask, appealing to the consciences of all that the fighting cease immediately.”
The cardinal went on to deplore the Russian attacks on civilians, evoking images of the suffering of an innocent population.
“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.
Women and children sit on the floor of a corridor in a hospital in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine Friday, March 11, 2022. Mariupol has been under siege for over a week, with no electricity, gas, or water (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka).
“Over the last few days, I have come across a group of them, who have arrived in Italy from various parts of Ukraine: blank stares, faces without smiles, endless sadness,” he added. “What is the fault of those young mothers and their children?”
“We would have to possess a heart of stone in order to remain impassive and allow this havoc to continue, as rivers of blood and tears continue to flow. War is a barbarity!”
Parolin also cited the Italian Constitution in which Italy “repudiates war as an instrument of offence against the freedom of other peoples and as a means of settling international disputes.”
“Those who wage war rely on the diabolical logic of weapons and forget humanity: how many examples do we have of the truth of these words!” he said.
The cardinal related that in his telephone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov this week he had appealed for an “immediate ceasefire.”
“I asked for an end to the fighting and for a negotiated solution to the conflict,” he said. “I insisted on respect for the civilian population and on humanitarian corridors” while also offering the Holy See’s “total availability” for any mediation that could favor peace in Ukraine.
“War is like a cancer that grows, expands and feeds on itself,” Parolin declared, noting that when “a conflict is underway, when the number of defenseless victims grows, it is always difficult to turn back.”
We have “fallen into a vortex that can have incalculable and ill-fated consequences for everyone,” the cardinal lamented.
He also warned of possible long-term consequences as fears grow that war is an inevitability.
“Today we see that in the face of what is happening in Ukraine, many people are talking about rearmament: new and huge sums of money are being allocated to armaments, the logic of war seems to prevail, the distance between nations is increasing,” he said.
“We are falling back into the past instead of daring to take steps towards a different future, a future of peaceful coexistence,” he cautioned. “Unfortunately, it must be acknowledged that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have not been able to build a new system of coexistence between nations that goes beyond military alliances or economic convenience.”
“The current war in Ukraine makes this defeat clear,” he stated. “But I would also like to say that it is never too late, it is never too late to make peace, it is never too late to retrace one’s steps and find an agreement.”
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