(ZENIT News / Rome, 18.03.2025).-The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published a letter of the Pope sent to Luciano Fontana, the newspaper’s Director. The letter is dated March 14.
Fontana wrote to the Pope requesting his intervention in the context of global armed conflicts. In addition to addressing the requested topic, Pope Francis also spoke briefly about his health. Below is the full text of the letter, translated into English.
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Dear Director.
I would like to thank you or your words of closeness , with which you wished to be present at this time of illness in which, as I have said, war seems even more absurd. Human frailty, in fact, has the power to make us clearer about what lasts and what passes, about what makes us live and what kills. Perhaps, because of this, we often tend to deny the limits and to avoid fragile and wounded people: they have the power to question the direction we have chosen, as individuals and as community.
I would like to encourage you and all those that dedicate their work and intelligence to report — through communication tools that now unite our world in real time: sense the importance of words. They are never just words: they are facts that build human environments. They can connect or divide, serve the truth or makes use of it. We must disarm the words, [in order] to disarm minds and disarm the Earth. There is a great need for reflection, calm and sense of the complexity.
Whereas war only devastates communities and the environment, without offering solutions to conflicts, diplomacy and international organizations need new blood and credibility. Moreover, religions can be inspired in the spirituality of peoples to revive the desire for brotherhood and justice, the hope for peace.
All this calls for commitment, work, silence, words. Let us feel united in this effort, which heavenly Grace will not cease to inspire and accompany.
Pope Francis
Translation of the Italian original into Spanish by ZENIT’s Editorial Director and, into English, by Virginia M. Forrester.
