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| Pope Francis at U.S Military Cemetery. Photo Credits (Reuters UK) |
On Thursday, Pope
Francis made one of his most emotional anti-war addresses during his visit to the
US military cemetery that the world seemed to be headed into war perhaps bigger
than any before.
The cemetery Mass was
attended by US Ambassador to Italy Lewis Eisenberg and the acting US ambassador
to the Vatican, Louis Bono.
Francis said a Mass for
several thousand people at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in the town of
Nettuno, south of the Italian capital, on the day Roman Catholics commemorate
their dead.
"Please Lord,
stop. No more wars. No more of these useless massacres," he said, speaking
in hushed tones in an improvised homily.
"If today is a day
of hope, it is also a day of tears," the pope said. "Humanity must
not forget" the tears of mothers and wives who lost husbands and sons in
past wars.
"Humanity has not
learned the lesson and seems that it does not want to learn it," he said,
asking for prayers for the victims of today's conflicts, especially children.
He added.
Moreover, on his way
back to the Vatican, Francis stopped to pray at the Ardeatine Caves, where in
March, 1944 occupying Nazis killed 335 Italian men and boys as a reprisal for
the killing of 33 German policemen by partisans.
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