RNA - Today’s world is beset with many conflicts tantamount to “a kind of third world war being fought piecemeal and, in the context of global communications, we sense an atmosphere of war,” the pontiff told 65,000 Catholic worshippers during a mass service at Kosevo stadium in the Bosnian capital city of Sarajevo on Saturday.
“Some wish to incite and foment this atmosphere deliberately,” he went on to say, while urging the people all over the world to unite in the campaign against war.
The Pope also elaborated on the detrimental consequences of wars on the lives of civilians, saying Bosnians have already tasted the bitterness of deadly conflicts in their homeland.
“But war means children, women and the elderly in refugee camps, it means forced displacement, destroyed houses, streets and factories: above all countless shattered lives,” he pointed out, adding, “You know this well having experienced it here.”
Earlier in the day upon his arrival in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the pontiff called on different ethnic groups in the country to set aside their differences and intensify their reconciliation efforts, 20 years after a deadly conflict claimed the lives of over 100,000 people, mostly Muslims, and left around two million displaced.
He also hailed Sarajevo as a city which enjoys “very different ethnic and religious cultures.”
“It is even a city that has suffered much during its history. Now it is on a beautiful path of peace. I am making this trip to talk about this, as a sign of peace and a prayer for peace.”
During his one-day trip to the Muslim-majority European country, the Vatican leader is also scheduled to meet with representatives from Bosnia’s Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox Christian communities.
Bosnia’s 1992-95 war is notorious for an ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by Serbs against Muslim Bosniaks and, to a lesser extent, ethnic Croats.
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