Pope condemns ‘childlike’ whims of those who start wars

POPE Francis has joined Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders in calling for the world’s great religions to work together for peace, telling an interfaith summit that religion must never be used to justify violence and faith leaders must counter the “childlike” whims of the powerful to make war.

On his second day in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, Francis closed out a conference on East-West dialogue sponsored by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

It was his second such conference in as many months, following one in Kazakhstan, evidence of Francis’s core belief that moments of encounter among people of different faiths can help heal today’s conflicts and promote a more just and sustainable world.

Sitting around him in the Sakhir royal palace grounds were leading Muslim imams, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, and US rabbis.

Speaker after speaker called for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the start of peace negotiations.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which sent an envoy to the conference, has strongly supported the Kremlin in its war and justified it on religious grounds. Francis said: “We appear to be witnessing a childlike scenario: in the garden of humanity, instead of cultivating our surroundings, we are playing instead with fire, missiles and bombs.”