"When violence is used, we no longer know anything about God, who is Father, and not even about others, who are brothers. We forget why we are in the world and we get to commit absurd cruelties. We see it today in the madness of war, where we return to crucify Christ ".
So the Pope on Palm Sunday.
"Yes, Christ is once again nailed to the cross in the mothers who mourn the unjust death of their husbands and children. He is crucified in the refugees who flee from the bombs with children in their arms. He is crucified in the elderly left alone to die, in the young deprived of the future, in the soldiers sent to kill their brothers ".
"Christ is crucified there today", Francis reiterated in the homily of the Mass in St. Peter's Square, recalling the phrase of Jesus on the cross: "Father, forgive them because they do not know what they are doing", speaking of "that ignorance in the heart that all of us sinners have. "
"With God you can always go back to living - the Pontiff concluded -. Courage, let's walk towards Easter with his forgiveness. Because Christ continually intercedes with the Father for us and, looking at our violent and wounded world, Jesus does not tired of repeating, and we do it now with our hearts, in silence, repeating with Jesus: 'Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing' ".
"Put away your weapons, begin an Easter truce. But not to reload your weapons and resume fighting, no. A truce to achieve peace,
through real negotiation, also willing to make some sacrifices for the good of the people.
In fact, what victory will be the one who plants a flag on a pile of rubble? ". This is the appeal launched by Pope Francis for Ukraine at the Angelus in St. Peter's Square." In a little while we will turn to Our Lady in the Angelus prayer. - Pope Francis said from the churchyard of San Pietro at the end of the Palm Sunday mass -.
It was precisely the Angel of the Lord who in the Annunciation said to Mary: 'Nothing is impossible for God'.
Nothing is impossible for God, even to put an end to a war whose end is not in sight, a war that every day presents us with brutal massacres and atrocious cruelties committed against unarmed civilians.
Let us pray about this. "" We are in the days leading up to Easter,
we are preparing to celebrate the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ over sin and death, over sin and death, not over someone and against someone else, but today there is war because we want to win like this, in the way of the world because so it is only lost - added the Pontiff -.
Why not let Him win?
Christ carried the cross to free us from the dominion of evil, he died so that life, love and peace may reign ".
