By Philip Pullella
ROME (Reuters) – There are no real winners in any war, Pope Francis said on Thursday during a visit to a World War Two military cemetery, with conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine on his mind.
Francis used a wheelchair at Rome’s Commonwealth cemetery to pass by the gravestones and to lay flowers during a visit on All Souls Day, when the Roman Catholic Church commemorates all those who have died.
“Wars are always a defeat, always. There is never a total victory. One side wins over the other but behind that there is always defeat in the price that has to be paid,” he said in an improvised homily during a Mass at the cemetery attended by several ambassadors from Commonwealth countries.
Francis has called for a ceasefire in Gaza and the creation of humanitarian corridors to help relieve the suffering of its besieged inhabitants.
He has also called for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict, has said Israel has a right to defend itself from attack, and has condemned a rise in antisemitism worldwide.
In intermittent rain Francis, 86, stood for longer periods during the Mass than he has in more than a year, indicating that his knee ailment may now be giving him fewer problems.
The cemetery, in an area of Rome that was the scene of street fighting during World War Two, is the final resting place of about 425 soldiers from Britain and its former colonies who died while fighting in Italy.
Francis spoke of the tragedy of war.
“At the entrance, I was looking at the ages of the fallen, mostly between 20 and 30. Truncated lives, lives without a future, here,” he said
“I thought of the parents, of the mothers who received that letter: ‘Madam, I have the honour of telling you your son is a hero.’ ‘Yes, a hero, but they took him away from me’. So many tears in these truncated lives,” he said.
“The same thing is happening today. So many people, young and not so young, in the wars of the world, even those closer to us, in Europe and beyond … so many dead”.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Gareth Jones)
