Father John Dear, who has been arrested many times, looks at Pope Francis’ activities. See these excerpts and then read the entire
article.
Sincerely,
Ed
Everything Francis did was a form of Gospel peacemaking. Like Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and St. Francis, he was against war, all wars, no matter what the reason—and that’s the leap that few people make. One of his last books is called Against War. If you study the tributes in the mainstream press, you will notice that few mention his consistent stand against war, his opposition to nuclear weapons, and his efforts to end the wars in Africa and the Russian war on Ukraine. When Russia invaded Ukraine, he went to the Russian embassy and violated protocol by dramatically begging for an end to the war.
Most of all, he denounced the horrific Hamas attack, killings, and kidnappings, and from then on, he denounced the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza that has killed over 51,000 people. Nearly every night since the war began, at 7:00 pm, he called the one Catholic church in Gaza, right up through Holy Saturday, to see how they were holding up. His last public words on Easter were a call for a lasting cease-fire in Gaza. I hope we can all speak out publicly like he did until the day we die calling for an end to all wars and all nuclear weapons.
Everything Francis did was a form of Gospel peacemaking. Like Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and St. Francis, he was against war, all wars, no matter what the reason—and that’s the leap that few people make. One of his last books is called Against War. If you study the tributes in the mainstream press, you will notice that few mention his consistent stand against war, his opposition to nuclear weapons, and his efforts to end the wars in Africa and the Russian war on Ukraine. When Russia invaded Ukraine, he went to the Russian embassy and violated protocol by dramatically begging for an end to the war.
Most of all, he denounced the horrific Hamas attack, killings, and kidnappings, and from then on, he denounced the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza that has killed over 51,000 people. Nearly every night since the war began, at 7:00 pm, he called the one Catholic church in Gaza, right up through Holy Saturday, to see how they were holding up. His last public words on Easter were a call for a lasting cease-fire in Gaza. I hope we can all speak out publicly like he did until the day we die calling for an end to all wars and all nuclear weapons.
Francis wrote great books and greats encyclicals like “Fratelli Tutti,” where he called for a global fraternity rooted in love, solidarity, and respect for all people, where everyone moves beyond divisions and tries to work together to build a more just and compassionate world. But his encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si,” might be one of the great documents in history. Not only does he denounce our destruction of the planet and its creatures, as well as the poor, but he denounces capitalism, corporate greed, and war as root causes of climate change.
Everything Francis did was a form of Gospel peacemaking. Like Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and St. Francis, he was against war, all wars, no matter what the reason—and that’s the leap that few people make. One of his last books is called Against War. If you study the tributes in the mainstream press, you will notice that few mention his consistent stand against war, his opposition to nuclear weapons, and his efforts to end the wars in Africa and the Russian war on Ukraine. When Russia invaded Ukraine, he went to the Russian embassy and violated protocol by dramatically begging for an end to the war.
Pope Francis: A Nonviolent Revolutionary
A good way to honor Pope Francis’s peacemaking life and his death at Easter is to rise to the occasion as he did, to claim our power as public peacemakers.