POPE John Paul II has warned the war in Iraq must not be allowed to become a ‘religious catastrophe’.
The Pope, who has strongly opposed the attack on Iraq, made the comments as photos of civilian victims in the Middle East nation provoked sadness and indignation in much of the world, especially Muslim countries.
The Vatican’s top foreign affairs specialist, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, said it was already clear that the Iraqi war would generate terrorism and seriously damage Christian-Muslim dialogue.
Speaking at a noon blessing from his apartment window above St Peter’s Square on March 30, the Pope said the world was experiencing a moment in which ‘painful armed conflicts are threatening humanity’s hope in a better future’.
The day before, addressing bishops from predominantly Muslim Indonesia, the Pope expressed deep concern about the interreligious impact of the war in Iraq.
In Iraq, the Chaldean Catholic Church was forced to close its headquarters in the capital, Baghdad, and transfer its personnel elsewhere after a bomb or missile blew the building’s windows out. A Carmelite church in the capital also was damaged. About 175,000 Catholics, most of them of the Chaldean rite, live in Baghdad.
In Basra, the southern Iraqi city where some of the heaviest fighting has occurred, Archbishop Djibrail Kassab appealed for emergency medicine and water treatment equipment because people risked contracting diseases from drinking contaminated river water.
A statement signed on March 21 by 19 leaders of the Middle East Council of Churches, including two cardinals and six Catholic patriarchs, said the war threatened to unleash a ‘clash of civilisations’. They said it was immoral and could bring tragic repercussions to the entire region.
