Preventing war” “

Satellite photographs, radio intercepts and drawings were not enough to convince the UN Security Council to decide on a military offensive against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. What were supposed to be the incontrovertible proofs of Saddam’s failure to disarm, presented by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State on 5 September, instead divided the Security Council, Germany and France heading those in favour of pursuing the UN weapons inspections. “All lies” was the blunt Iraqi response to Powell’s speech. Meanwhile, Vatican diplomacy continues: on 14 February the Pope will receive Tarek Aziz, Iraqi deputy prime minister, in the Vatican. And faced by an imminent war, various anti-war positions by Church organizations are being registered. “All the ways of peace to resolve the current crisis must be sought, instead of rushing headlong into a war that will be a catastrophe for the Iraqi people and shameful for the world community”. That’s the appeal of Caritas Europe which joins with Caritas internationalis in urging a peaceful solution of the USA-Iraq crisis. Caritas Europe asks world leaders “to take every possible step to promote a peaceful solution”. It reaffirms “its support for persons and groups devoted to the construction of peace and the promotion of justice”. The network of Caritas agencies throughout the world has continually pressed for the suspension of the economic sanctions that “are ineffective and damaging for the civil population”, says Caritas Europe. Over the last ten years Caritas has been working with Caritas Iraq to alleviate the sufferings of the weakest: in 2001 over 20,000 Iraqi children and mothers benefited from a health-care programme and other forms of support. “We pray, as do Christians of all confessions, together with our Moslem brothers, that a bloodbath may be avoided”: that’s the appeal of the Swiss Episcopal Conference, issued on 5 February against a possible war in Iraq. The Swiss bishops say they are “deeply disturbed” by the attitude shown “in recent days by the media” which “no longer place in question the rightness or not of going to war, but confine themselves to speculating about the exact date of the beginning of the offensive”, or worse still, “focus their attention on the post-war period”. Expressing their own opposition to the concept of “preventive war”, and stressing that “what the world needs is not war but the prevention of war”, the bishops’ communiqué points out the risk of a “sharp escalation in terrorist threats by Islamic fanatics” and invites “all believers” in Switzerland to pray against war”. To the appeal of the Swiss bishops has been added that of the Luxembourg Episcopal Conference which, in recent days, reaffirmed its “firm opposition” to the war. A chorus of “no” to war can also be found in the editorials dedicated to the Iraqi crisis by the 143 periodicals of the Italian Federation of Catholic Weeklies (FISC) in recent weeks. Fabiana Martini, editor in chief of “Vita Nuova” (Trieste), summing up this collective rejection, writes: “If we truly wish peace, sobriety, solidarity and non-violence must be the first words in our vocabulary (…). Non-violence as a way of managing conflicts means – Martini stresses – that conflicts which must not be brushed under the carpet but tackled as an integral part of interpersonal and social relations (…). We need to be educated to acquire a conscience of rights and duties; we each need to learn to play our own part by using the democratic method to resolve conflicts through commonly accepted rules and not merely by the strength of numbers”. The voice of the Pope is constantly being cited by the weeklies: according to Lorenzo Biagi (“La Vita del Popolo”, Treviso), John Paul II is a “solitary prophet”, for his “is not the logic of those who preach ideals, still less of those whose action is determined by pride and anger. No. We are above all that. Peace does not tolerate any ideological cage”.