Fasting against the war in Iraq
Apr 05, 2005
John Paul II called for Friday, Dec. 14 2001, to be a day of fasting and prayer for peace. I arrived at the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, where several curial departments with offices in the nearby Piazza San Calisto had organized a service. These include the Council for Laity, Council for the Family, Cor Unum, the Council for Peace and Justice, the Council for Pastoral Care for Migrants, and the Council for Culture. By John L. Allen.
(National Catholic Reporter, Dec 21, 2001) During the Mass that followed, Cardinal Giovanni Cheli’s homily offered the strongest anti-war statement I have heard from any Vatican official since Sept. 11.
(Cheli, now retired, is the former head of the Council for Migrants, where he was the boss and patron of exorcist Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo. His soap opera-style marriage riveted the world last summer. To Cheli’s credit, he stood by his friend, and is credited with helping bring the affair to resolution).
After Sept. 11, Cheli said, people found themselves asking, “How can we bring an enduring peace to the world?”
“The Western powers decided that war is the only way to attack terrorism and bring peace, and so war with all its force has fallen upon Afghanistan,” Cheli said. “Inevitably it has taken the lives of unarmed persons, destroyed homes, created orphans and widows, produced hunger, and left sick people without medicines.”
“Today,” Cheli said, “we see the result. Even worse evils are loose in the world, in the Middle East and elsewhere. There is a new level of hate, of desperation, of violence.”
Nothing can justify terrorism, Cheli said. But there are “enormous injustices” in the world, he said, such as the denial to whole peoples of the right to determine their own future. “The fight against terrorism,” he said, “must start here.”
“Our arms must be prayer, penance and charity,” Cheli said. “They are the only ones that can secure the victory.”
Fasting against the war in Iraq