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VATICAN PRESS OFFICE
An image by photographer Joseph Roger O'Donnell that Pope Francis is circulating during the holidays. |
QUITE A TIMELY message from Pope Francis.
With social media blowing up about Donald Trump’s taunting juvenile response to North Korean President Kim Jong Un’s public boast about his country’s growing nuclear presence, the Pope has issued his own message.
CNN reports the Pontiff has printed cards with a photo of the aftermath of the atomic bomb drop on Nagasaki. The photo on the card shows a boy carrying his dead brother on his shoulder as he stood in line at a crematorium. The words “fruits of war” are printed on the back of the card.
“The young boy’s sadness is expressed only in his gesture of biting his lips, which are oozing blood,” the inscription on the pope’s card says.
The Independent reports the card was issued ahead of the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace on January 1.
Pope Francis spoke to 40,000 people gathered at the Vatican to hear his New Year’s message. He criticized Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.
He spoke of the “weakest and most needy,” migrants and refugees.
“Please, let us not extinguish the hope in their hearts, let us not suffocate their hopes for peace.
“For this peace, to which everyone has a right, many of them are willing to risk their lives in a journey which is often long and dangerous, they are willing to face strain and suffering.”
Pope Francis spoke to 40,000 people gathered at the Vatican to hear his New Year’s message. He criticized Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.
He spoke of the “weakest and most needy,” migrants and refugees.
“Please, let us not extinguish the hope in their hearts, let us not suffocate their hopes for peace.
“For this peace, to which everyone has a right, many of them are willing to risk their lives in a journey which is often long and dangerous, they are willing to face strain and suffering.”
In November, the Vatican hosted a major international summit on nuclear disarmament gathering 11 Nobel Peace Prize winners, in which Pope Francis warned against “the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of any employment of nuclear devices.”
“International relations cannot be held captive to military force, mutual intimidation, and the parading of stockpiles of arms,” he said.
Nuclear weapons, Francis said, “create nothing but a false sense of security,” adding that “the threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is firmly to be condemned.”
(Views From the Edge contributed to this report.)
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