VATICAN CITY (CNS): In a private audience with one of the staunchest supporters of possible military action against Iraq, Pope John Paul II told British Prime Minister Tony Blair to make every effort to avoid war and “spare the world new divisions”.
The encounter at the Vatican on February 22 was the most prominent in a week of meetings, speeches and peace initiatives by Church leaders at the Vatican and around the world.
In a strongly worded public appeal a day after the meeting with Mr Blair, the Pope said a new war in Iraq could “disturb the entire region of the Middle East” and aggravate tensions around the world. He said all believers should reject the violence of terrorism and the logic of war, and he asked Catholics to pray and fast in a special way for peace on Ash Wednesday, March 5.
A Vatican statement after the meeting made it clear that the Church leaders had not changed their thinking on the war.
It was Mr Blair’s first meeting with Pope John Paul, and the day before the papal audience he said he recognised that the two held different perspectives on the war.
As Mr Blair visited Rome, Catholic and Anglican leaders in Britain said the prime minister had not made a convincing case for war.
In a February 20 statement, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster and Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury said working though the United Nations and UN weapons inspections in Iraq “could and should render the trauma and tragedy of war unnecessary”.
At the Vatican, the Pope and his aides met on February 18 with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to discuss the Iraqi crisis.
Cardinal Sodano, speaking later to reporters, said war with Iraq was not inevitable and expressed support for a resolution adopted on February 17 by the European Union calling for the disarmament of Iraq through peaceful means.
The Pope, speaking on February 20 to religious leaders from Indonesia, a country with a Muslim majority, warned that a war on Iraq could damage international interreligious relations.
At the United Nations, the Vatican representative again laid out the Church’s main arguments against a military attack on Iraq. Archbishop Celestino Migliore told the Security Council on February 19 that, with “the wealth of peaceful tools” available for resolving international disputes, it would not be just to “resort to force” to solve the Iraqi crisis.
