Pope Francis warned of the threat of
nuclear war in an audience on Wednesday with participants in the
XII Colloquium between the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue
and the 'Centre for Interreligious & Intercultural Dialogue' in
Teheran.
The Argentine pontiff said the world was "divided and rent by
hatred, hostility, wars and the threat of a nuclear conflict".
He appealed to people of all faiths "to pray and work for
dialogue, reconciliation, peace, security and the integral
development of all humanity."
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Tuesday
lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons after the
United States said it had authorized Ukraine to use its missiles
against military targets inside Russia.
Later on Wednesday during his weekly general audience, the pope
described the war in Ukraine as a "shameful disaster for the
whole of humanity" after the 1,000-day mark since the Russian
invasion passed on Tuesday.
He said the scale of the tragedy should not dissuade us from
"standing alongside the martyred Ukrainian people" and working
for peace, so that "weapons might give way to dialogue and
combat to encounter."
Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, the wife of President
Volodymyr Zelensky, attended the audience.
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