Faced with irresponsibility, people are called to responsibility

By Andrea Tornielli

The world continues to hold its breath following what has happened in the last six months and unfortunately is happening today in the Middle East.

Ever-more dramatic events are unfolding, including the cruel aggression within Israel perpetrated by Hamas with the killing of 1,200 people, mostly peaceful civilians; the saturation bombing and invasion of the Gaza Strip that has caused almost 34,000 deaths, mostly civilians, many of them children; the raid that gutted the palace of an Iranian diplomatic mission in Damascus; Iran's response with drone and missile attacks on Israeli military targets; and, on Friday, Israel's response attacking military targets in Iran.

All this poses the ever-greater risk that escalation will degenerate into choices with no point of return, which would drag the whole world into a conflict with incalculable consequences.

With Pope Francis, the only world leader from whose words emerges the awareness of the tragic crossroads we are facing, we say no to war and violence, and yes to peace and negotiation.

More than twenty years ago, after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, Pope St. John Paul II published his 2002 World Day of Peace message, significantly titled, "No Peace Without Justice, No Justice Without Forgiveness."

His words were true and prophetic. The logic of reaction and revenge, of the response that must always follow, triggers a spiral from which it is difficult to emerge, and whose catastrophic consequences will be paid by ordinary people.

Ours is a world in which there are irresponsible people, who, instead of investing in the fight against hunger, improving healthcare services, renewable energies, and creating an economy less subservient to the lords of finance and more attentive to the common good, only think of investing huge sums in rearmament and in the most sophisticated tools to produce death and destruction. In the face of this, our appeal can only be directed to the responsibility of people.

While believers raise prayers to God to inspire the choices of those who govern, millions of people join their voices to raise a cry for peace.

War is a path without return. In a world with arsenals full of nuclear weapons, these dramatically true words become more and more real each day.