by Don Renato Sacco
Member of Pax Christi
Unscribable, unacceptable. No. You cannot feel in Parliament, the highest place of democracy in Italy, words like Si VIS Pacem Para Bellum (if you want peace prepares the war). We heard them pronounce from the Prime Minister. Which he said he thought it precisely as the ancient Romans, but also as Trump, Netanyahu and Rutte, NATO secretary, who is in seventh heaven for the approval now close to the commitment of the NATO countries to spend 5% of the GDP for weapons in the coming years! For Italy they are a hundred billion more billions. Pope Francis had already said it well: “They are crazy”. Instead of repudiating the war, the Constitution is repudiated. And perhaps the United Nations Statute, approved just 80 years ago, on June 26, is also repudiated. The prologue reads: “We, peoples of the United Nations, decided to save future generations from the scourge of war …”
The Gospel does not say ‘if you want peace prepares the war’. Not only the Gospel, but all the magisterium of the Church goes in the direction of the condemnation of the war. The Gospel is mildness, peace, nonviolence, cross, scandal and foolishness. It is resurrection, mercy, forgiveness. It is life, not death. And it would be enough to remember the “unarmed and disarming peace” of Leone XIV. And also the encyclical All brothersby Pope Francis, with a request then taken up again in the bubble of the jubilee: “With the money that is used in arms and other military expenses we constitute a world fund to finally eliminate hunger and for the development of the poorest countries”. We are going exactly in the opposite direction!
We remember at least the encyclical Populorum progressio of 1967, at n. 53: «When many peoples are hungry, when many families suffer from misery, when many men live immersed in ignorance, when many schools remain to be built, many hospitals, many homes worthy of the name, every public or private waste, every expense made for national or personal ostentation, every exhausting armaments race becomes an intolerable scandal. We have a duty to report it. They want those responsible to listen to us before it’s too late ».
And Pope Francis, writing to young people on 6 July 2022, speaking of the martyrdom of Franz Jägerstätter Who refused to swear to Hitler, who preferred to be killed that killing, said: «If all the young people called to weapons had done like him, Hitler could not have made his diabolical plans. The evil to win needs accomplices ».
They also worry the almost sweet tones, which tend to reassure, in front of the hypothesis of the war. Perhaps the words of Pope Leo to Angelus on Sunday must be welcomed. «Today more than ever, humanity shouts and invokes peace. It is a cry that asks for responsibility and reason, and must not be suffocated by the roar of weapons and rhetorical words that incite the conflict. Each member of the international community has a moral responsibility: to stop the tragedy of the war, before it becomes an irreparable chasm ».
Renato Saccom National Councilor of Pax Christi X FC
