"Holy Father, thank you for your message of peace. I am German, as you can hear from my accent. My people are responsible for millions of deaths eighty years ago. I would like to ask a question about peace, since my people are responsible for millions of deaths, we learn in school that you should never use weapons, never violence: the only exception is self-defense. In your opinion, should Ukraine be given weapons at this time?"
This is a political decision.
Which can be moral – morally acceptable – if it is done according to the conditions of morality, which are manifold, and then we can talk about it. But it can be immoral, if it is done with the intention of provoking more war, or selling weapons, or discarding those weapons that are no longer needed. The motivation is what largely qualifies the morality of this act.
To defend oneself is not only lawful, but also an expression of love of country. Those who do not defend themselves, those who do not defend something, do not love it. Instead those who defend, love.
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Here you touch on something else that I said in one of my speeches...
which is that one should think more about the concept of just war. Because everybody is talking about peace today: for so many years, for seventy years, the United Nations has been talking about peace, they have been making so many speeches about peace. But right now, how many wars are going on?
The one you mentioned, Ukraine-Russia, now Azerbaijan and Armenia which had stopped for a while because Russia acted as a guarantor: a guarantor of peace here and makes war there...
Then there is Syria, ten years of war, what is going on there, for which it never stops? What interests are moving these things? Then there is the Horn of Africa, then northern Mozambique, or Eritrea, and a part of Ethiopia, then Myanmar with this suffering people that I love so much, the Rohingya people, who go around and around and around like a gypsy and find no peace.
But we are in a world war, please...
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I remember a personal event, as a child.
I was nine years old.
I remember hearing the alarm of the biggest newspaper in Buenos Aires sounding: sometimes to celebrate and other times to give bad news. They would sound that – now it doesn't sound anymore – and it could be heard all over the city. Mother said, "What's going on?"
We were in the war, the year 1945. A neighbor came to the house, and said, "The alarm sounded..." and she cried, "The war is over!" And I still see mom and the neighbor crying with joy, because the war was over, in a South American country, so far away! These women knew that peace is greater than all wars, and they cried with joy when peace was made.
I cannot forget that.
I wonder...
I don't know if our hearts are educated well enough today...
to cry for joy when we see peace.
Everything has changed.
If you don't make war, you are not useful! Then there is the arms business. This is a store of assassins. Someone who understands statistics told me, that if you stopped making weapons for a year, you would solve all the hunger in the world – I don't know if that's true or not. But hunger, education... it’s no use, you can't, because you have to make weapons.
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In Genoa, a few years ago, three or four years ago...
a ship arrived loaded with weapons, that was going to transfer them to a bigger ship, that was going to Africa, near South Sudan. The dock workers didn't want to do it. It cost them, but they said, "I won’t cooperate." It is an anecdote, but one that makes one feel a consciousness of peace.
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You spoke about your homeland.
One of the things I learned from you, is the ability to repent and ask forgiveness for the mistakes of war. And also, not only to ask forgiveness, but to pay for the mistakes of war – this speaks well of you. It is an example that we should imitate.
War itself is a mistake, it is a mistake! And we right now are breathing this air: if there is no war, it seems there is no life. A bit messy but I said all I wanted to say about just war. But the right to defense yes, that yes, but use it when necessary.
[bron]
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