“War is the suicide of humanity because it kills the heart and kills love,” Pope Francis said in his homily at Mass this morning at the Casa Santa Marta. In attendance at the Mass was a group of about 80 people, consisting of relatives of Italian soldiers killed in peacekeeping missions in the last 4-5 years, particularly in Afghanistan, along with a number of soldiers wounded during the same missions. June 2nd is “Republic Day” in Italy, which commemorates the foundation of the Italian republic in 1946. Archbishop Vincenzo Pelvi, the head of the Military Ordinary in Italy, who concelebrated Mass with the Holy Father, said it is a “significant day” in which the country expresses “a debt of love for military families.”
“The Lord hears the prayers of everyone!” – not only Solomon’s prayers on the day of the consecration of the Temple, but also the prayer of all of us. Pope Francis emphasised that fact, citing the Gospel story of the centurion who goes to Jesus to ask for the healing of his servant. He said our God is such that He hears the prayers of each one of us – not as an “anonymous” mass of prayers, but the prayers of each and every individual. “Our God is the God of the great and the God of small, our God is personal,” He listens to everyone with His heart, and loves “from the heart”:
“Today we have come to pray for our dead, for our wounded, for the victims of the madness that is war! It is the suicide of humanity, because it kills the heart, it kills precisely that which is the message of the Lord: it kills love! Because war comes from hatred, from envy, from desire for power, and – we’ve seen it many times – it comes from that hunger for more power.”
Pope during mass