God doesn't again warfare: Pope says in veiled criticism of Russian patriarch | World News

Pope Francis mentioned on Wednesday that God doesn't information religions in the direction of warfare, an implicit criticism of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, who backs the invasion of Ukraine and has boycotted a convention of religion leaders.

On his second day in Kazakhstan, Francis addressed the Seventh Congress of Leaders of World and Conventional Religions, a gathering that brings collectively Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and different faiths.

The congress is marked by Kirill's conspicuous absence.

He was to have attended however later pulled out.

The Russian Orthodox Church despatched a delegation.

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"God is peace. He guides us at all times in the way in which of peace, by no means that of warfare," Francis mentioned, talking at an enormous spherical desk within the Independence Palace, an enormous trendy construction product of metal and glass within the capital of the previous Soviet republic.

"Allow us to commit ourselves, then, much more to insisting on the necessity for resolving conflicts not by the inconclusive technique of energy, with arms and threats, however by the one means blessed by heaven and worthy of man: encounter, dialogue and affected person negotiations," he mentioned.

The pope, who earlier this yr mentioned Kirill couldn't be Russian President Vladimir Putin's "altar boy," advised the convention: The sacred mustn't ever be a prop for energy, nor energy a prop for the sacred!"

Kirill has given enthusiastic backing to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which the patriarch views as a bulwark in opposition to a West he calls decadent.

His stance has precipitated a rift with the Vatican and unleashed an inside riot that has led to the severing of ties by some native Orthodox Church buildings with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Francis additionally mentioned that whereas violence in God's identify was by no means justified, the "viruses" of hate and terrorism wouldn't be eradicated with out first wiping out injustice and poverty.

He mentioned non secular freedom was important for peaceable coexistence in any society and no creed had a proper to coerce others to transform.

"It's time to understand that fundamentalism defiles and corrupts each creed," he mentioned. "Allow us to free ourselves of these reductive and harmful notions that offend the identify of God by harshness, extremism and types of fundamentalism, and profane it by way of hatred, fanaticism, and terrorism, disfiguring the picture of man as nicely."

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However merely condemning extremism was not sufficient.

"So long as inequality and injustice proceed to proliferate, there can be no finish to viruses even worse than COVID: the viruses of hatred, violence and terrorism," he mentioned.

Francis, who wrote a serious doc in 2015 on the necessity to defend the setting, mentioned non secular leaders needed to be within the entrance line in bringing consideration to the hazards of local weather change and excessive climate, notably its results on society's poor and weak.

There are solely about 125,000 Catholics among the many 19 million inhabitants of the huge Central Asian nation. About 70% of the Kazakhs are Muslim and about 26% Orthodox Christians.

Francis will say a Mass for the tiny Catholic group on Wednesday afternoon.