Catholic World News

Vatican official fears Syrian conflict could explode into world war

September 03, 2013

The secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace told Vatican Radio that “the conflict in Syria has all the ingredients to explode into a war of global dimensions.”

Asked to comment on “the fear expressed by many voices in the Church that an attack on Syria would extend the violence throughout the region,” Archbishop Mario Toso said that the Pope has condemned “war that is conducted with the use of indiscriminate weapons and affects primarily the defenseless civilian population. It is never the use of violence that leads to peace."

“No one would come out of it unharmed by conflict or by an experience of violence,” said Archbishop Mario Toso. “There can be no alternative but that of reasonable encounters, of initiatives based on dialogue and negotiation.”

The prelate added that Pope Francis’s cry for peace in Syria reflects the desire of people around the world and that the Pope is “anxious about the dramatic developments that lie ahead, in the light of how they are moving the great ones of the earth.”

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