Renato Farina October 3, 2022
Advice to sailors, captains and crew of the only great boat on which mankind embarks on life’s arduous journey. IS pope Francis to spread an alarm resembling the trumpets of judgment. He says: If there is not an immediate “armistice…” there is a risk of “a nuclear escalation, to the point of fear of uncontrollable and catastrophic consequences worldwide”. What does Francesco know? Inspiration of the Holy Spirit? We leave that to the believers. More prosaically, the Vatican is the terminal of a diplomacy that goes far beyond official representations and has sensors in the palaces of the powerful and in the suburbs of the wretched.
Benedict XV during the First World War, Pius XII before and during the Second World War. Stop it, otherwise it will be “useless carnage”, because “nothing is lost with peace. Everything can be with war ». I go on: John XXIII (1962), when the superpower clash in Cuba seemed inevitable; John Paul II and the Secretariat of State conjure up an infinite Vietnam in Iraq and the Middle East in the event of an American invasion (1991 and 2003). Then Francis first for Syria in 2013 and then … Then yesterday and maybe today and tomorrow we are at the head of NATO with unprecedented drama about the Slavic fratricide unleashed by Russia, but with responsibility – according to Bergoglio. For this he “first begged Putin” to stop “at least for the sake of his people”, condemned the massacres and the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian provinces, but also called on Zelenskyy “with confidence” to “open a series of peace proposals”. Addressing the other protagonists (without naming them: America, NATO, the EU, Italy, China, Turkey, everyone!) who share power over nations by taking it from each other, he called for dialogue and a stable peace , “with all the instruments diplomats, even those not previously used ».
Impossible claim! To ask in the name of God to stop crushing the viper’s head and gain a probable victory takes courage, humanity. But the Pope is also very practical: realism dictates it, everyone risks dying, winners and losers, all defeated. Timeline. At midday, the Pope looked out of the window of the third loggia at St. Peter’s Square and at the Sunday Angelus at the whole world. As a rule, he comments on the Gospel of the Mass, and only after a Marian prayer, which ends with the Latin blessing, does he say a few words about peace and war. This also applied to all liturgical occasions after February 24, the date of the Russian attack on Ukraine. Yesterday he changed the script. First, the verdict on the frightening rolling of human history, a “great concern,” he says, which allows him to transition seamlessly (see the images on vatican.va) from the speech to the sign of the cross and to the formulas of the incarnation of God in Mary’s womb .
A turning point that is not a simple variation on the dramatic ceremonial to pose a question to those who have heard it live or read its intervention, which is immediately restarted on a global scale. Not gospel, but what comes out of the gospel: peace, peace now, or is it the end. What does Francis know more than geopolitical pundits and national leaders? Why are those who hold the spiritual scepter of the highest religious and moral authority in the world jeopardizing that reputation? Let’s think about this before we dismiss the warning as over-the-top preaching. Something he knows as “serious, catastrophic and menacing” compels him, makes him subvert the merchant estates, circumvent good manners, tread the ground of crude diplomatic-military analysis in his orthopedic shoes, and heavily employ the weapon of rhetoric a high.
“In the name of God and in the name of the humanity that resides in every heart, I renew my appeal for an immediate ceasefire. The guns are silent ». Is he toying with scaring us to break through our proverbial indifference to facts that mean the deaths of others? Or to regain popularity in the Western media, tarnished by the failed crusade against Russia, without having sent a halberd or a Michelangelo helmet of the Swiss Guard to Kyiv? Sorry for the sarcasm, but that was and is the claim of many Catholics. This happened during World War II when Pius XI. refused to put “his divisions” (ironic copyright Stalin) on the right side of history. Yesterday, live worldwide, he begged, without adding a word to the written text, with a stony face, his fingers clenched in a fist and then brought to his heart: Peace!