Pope Francis: ‘Barbarity of war’ should inspire new push for Christian unity

Pope Francis said on Friday that the “barbarity of war” should inspire a new push for Christian unity.

The pope made the comment in an address to members of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity on May 6, the 72nd day of the Russia-Ukraine war.

The conflict between the two predominantly Orthodox Christian nations has tested relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as within Eastern Orthodoxy.

In his speech, Pope Francis said that Christian communities needed to recognize they were on a journey of faith together with the members of other confessions.

When a community tried to go it alone, he said, it ran the risk of “self-sufficiency and self-referentiality, which are grave obstacles to ecumenism.”

“And we see it,” he commented. “In some countries, there are certain egocentric revivals — so to speak — of some Christian communities that are a turning back and unable to advance. Today, either we all walk together or we cannot walk. This awareness is a truth and a grace of God.”

The pope noted that he had often described 21st-century conflicts as “a piecemeal World War III.”

“However, this war, as cruel and senseless as any war, has a greater dimension and threatens the entire world, and cannot fail to challenge the conscience of every Christian and every Church,” he said.

Quoting from his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti, the pontiff went on: “We must ask ourselves: what have the Churches done and what can they do to contribute to the ‘development of a global community of fraternity based on the practice of social friendship on the part of peoples and nations’? It’s a question we need to think about together.”

The pope suggested that efforts to improve relations between Christians in the 20th century were motivated partly by the horror of two world wars.

“Today, in the face of the barbarity of war, this longing for unity must be nourished anew,” he commented.

“To ignore divisions among Christians, whether out of habit or out of resignation, is to tolerate that pollution of hearts which makes fertile ground for conflicts.”

“The proclamation of the gospel of peace, that gospel which disarms hearts even before armies, will be more credible only if proclaimed by Christians finally reconciled in Jesus, Prince of Peace.”