Pope Francis says Eastern Catholic Churches have shown heroic faith amid miseries of war

Pope Francis said on Friday that the Eastern Catholic Churches have witnessed to heroic faith amid the miseries of war.

“We have witnessed the slaughter resulting from conflicts in the Middle East, in Syria and Iraq, and those in the Ethiopian region of the Tigray,” Pope Francis said on Feb. 18.

“Threatening winds continue to blow in the steppes of Eastern Europe, lighting fuses and firing weapons, and turning to ice the hearts of the poor and the innocent.”

In an audience with Catholic leaders from the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe at the Vatican, the pope observed that these lands torn and threatened by war are also the motherlands of the Eastern Catholic Churches, which have preserved centuries-old traditions.

“Your daily life is therefore like a mixture of the precious dust of the gold of your past and the heroic witness of faith of many in the present, together, however, with the mud of the miseries for which we are also responsible and the pain caused to you by external forces,” the pope said.

Pope Francis lamented that previous popes’ pleas for peace — from Benedict XV’s denunciation of war as a “useless massacre” amid World War I to St. John Paul II’s appeal in 2003 to avoid conflict in Iraq — went unheeded.

“We had hoped that there would be no need to repeat similar words in the third millennium, yet humanity still seems to be groping in darkness,” Francis said.

“As in this moment, in which there are so many wars everywhere, this appeal both of popes and of the men and women of good will is unheard … We are attached to wars and this is tragic,” he said.

The pope added that while humanity has made advances in science, it has moved “backward in weaving peace.”

“And this puts us all to shame. We must pray and ask for forgiveness for this attitude,” he said.

Pope Francis met with participants in the Vatican Congregation for the Eastern Churches’ plenary assembly, which took place in Rome this week.

The Congregation for the Eastern Churches works with the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches that are sui iuris, or self-governing, and in full communion with Rome.

Among them are the Maronite Church, which celebrates the liturgy in Aramaic and Arabic, and the Syriac Catholic Church, which has members spread across Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, as well as a growing diaspora in the United States.