Forgotten wars are a sin

Francis received the PIME in audience on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of “Mondo e Missione”, the institute’s magazine from whose experience “” was also born: “Give voice to the hope that the encounter with Christ sows in the lives of people and the villages”. “I bless its readers and supporters.”

Vatican City () – “Forgotten wars are a sin”, conflicts that last for years cannot be “forgotten like this”. Pope Francis said today upon receiving in audience in the Clementine Hall from the Vatican to the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of World and Missionthe magazine of the institute from whose experience was also born . Our newsroom was also present at the meeting and we presented the Pope with a photograph of Father Leone Nani, a PIME missionary and photographer in China at the beginning of the 20th century.

“Today we are all worried, and it is good that we are, about a war here in Europe, at the gates of Europe and in Europe,” Francis said. “But there have been wars for years: more than ten years in Syria, think of Yemen, think of Myanmar, think of Africa. These do not enter, they are not from cultured Europe…”

Remembering the origins of World and Mission -born in 1872 in Milan, following the model of Les Missions Catholiqueswhich the Work for the Propagation of the Faith had begun to publish four years earlier in Lyon, France – the Pontiff said that “the present, the modernity, the horizon of this initiative, which from the beginning expresses and promotes an ‘out going’ Church. Yes, when you’re out you stay young. If you’re sitting there, not going, you’ll get old soon!”

“These pioneers of 150 years ago understood the importance of making known the countries to which they were destined and the way in which, in those distant lands, the encounter between the Gospel and the local communities took place.” Therefore, from the beginning, “the magazine was the bearer of a broad vision, open to the riches of each town and each local Church.”

The pope pointed to the “geographical and existential peripheries” as places where “to be the voice of the voiceless.” “In a world where communication has seemingly shortened distances,” he commented, “the peripheries continue to be relegated to the margins. The distances have been shortened, it is true, but the ideological ‘customs’ have multiplied. Therefore, the challenge remains to go there to make known the beauty and richness of differences, but also the many distortions and injustices of societies that are increasingly interconnected and, at the same time, marked by serious inequalities”.

Pope Francis also pointed out that Mondo e Missione has another task: “help recognize that the mission is at the center“. “Remind the Christian communities that, if they only look at themselves, losing the courage to go out and take the word of Jesus to everyone, they end up becoming extinct.” He called for “showing how the Gospel, when meeting with peoples and different cultures, it is offered to us again every day in all its newness and freshness”.

Hence the invitation to “give voice to the hope that the encounter with Christ sows in the lives of individuals and peoples”. To tell everyone that a better world is possible when, following Jesus, we learn to reach out to each brother and sister.” “I bless you from my heart,” he concluded, “and I also bless your readers and supporters. And I ask you to please pray for me.”