VATICAN CITY (CNS): Pope John Paul II began the new year with a new plea for peace in the Middle East and for world leaders to find peaceful solutions to tense situations elsewhere.
“Despite serious and repeated attacks on the peaceful and harmonious co-existence of peoples, peace is possible and necessary,” the Pope said to applause on January 1 during a Mass marking World Peace Day and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.
“In the face of events which are upsetting the planet, it clearly appears that only God can touch the depths of the human heart; only his peace can give hope back to humanity,” the Pope said in his homily.
With the Mass celebrated just a week after Christmas, the Pope said it was impossible not to look “with apprehension and pain to that holy place where Jesus was born”.
“The dramatic and continuing tension in which this region of the Middle East finds itself makes even more urgent the search for a positive solution to the fratricidal and senseless conflict which has bloodied it for so long,” Pope John Paul said.
