We must "walk from conflict to unity" in "the whole Middle East" and "in particular in martyred Syria", pleaded, Saturday March 6, Pope Francis during an ecumenical prayer in Ur, hometown of Abraham in Iraq, according to tradition.
The day before during an address to the authorities in Baghdad, the Pope had already mentioned Syria, where a popular revolt degenerated into a complex war just 10 years ago, killing more than 387,000.
The talks conducted under the auspices of the United Nations have so far produced no progress.
>> To read: Ayatollah Sistani to Pope Francis: Christians in Iraq must live "in peace"
"Peace requires neither victors nor vanquished, but brothers and sisters who, despite the misunderstandings and the wounds of the past, walk from conflict to unity", said the Argentine Pope, in the desert plain of Ur , where Abraham was born and lived, a character from the Old Testament recognized by Christians, Muslims and Jews.
"There will be no peace without sharing and welcoming"
"Let us ask it in prayer for the whole Middle East, I am thinking in particular of neighboring, martyred Syria," he added.
"It is unworthy, when we are all tried by the crisis of the pandemic, and especially here where conflicts have caused so much misery, that one thinks avidly of his own affairs. There will be no peace without sharing and welcoming, without a justice that ensures equity and promotion for all, starting with the weakest. There will be no peace without peoples who reach out to other peoples ", commented the Sovereign Pontiff.
"It is up to us, today's humanity, and above all to us, believers of all religions, to convert the instruments of hatred into instruments of peace," he said.
With AFP
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