ROME (CNS): The Vatican’s foreign affairs expert, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, warned the war on Iraq would generate terrorism and seriously wound Christian-Muslim dialogue.
Archbishop Tauran, speaking late last month to an Italian Catholic weekly magazine, also said the war saddened him above all because of the ‘contempt (shown) for international law’.
‘This war will generate all the extremisms possible, including the Islamic one. We must be aware of this. It will provoke terrorism,’ he said.
‘And it will inflict a great wound on the dialogue between Christianity and Islam,’ he said.
Some Arab commentators, he noted, had already started describing the US-led invasion of Iraq as another Christian ‘crusade’ into Muslim lands.
‘It is propaganda, but it would be very easy to start down this path,’ Archbishop Tauran said.
The archbishop said the war had seemed avoidable because over the years international law has developed to a point where it is ‘particularly complete and refined’.
The archbishop said the Vatican’s outspoken opposition to the war had served a purpose even if it ultimately failed to prevent the conflict.
