If words could stop wars, Pope Francis’ passionate entreaty to Russia – “In the name of God, hear the cry of those who suffer and put an end to the bombings and attacks ... In the name of God, I ask you: Stop this slaughter!” – would have prevailed. Instead, the very atmosphere is filled with horrific images of shattered, burning buildings in the great cities of Ukraine, and whole populations fleeing to the West to escape the terror. It is as gross an act of inhumanity as the human race has seen in eight decades. The world scarcely witnessed the Nazi destruction of Warsaw in 1944; now it knows what it would have looked like.
It may be no coincidence that Warsaw is again in the front line, for Catholic Poland has generously thrown open its borders to desperate refugees from Orthodox Ukraine, who are arriving literally by the million. People the whole world over feel their anguish. The global effort now is to match and if possible exceed the quantity of evil loosed by Vladimir Putin with an equal or greater quantity of good, a huge humanitarian effort to douse the flames of his inhumanity for the sake of the honour of humanity itself, which would otherwise die of shame.
16 March 2022, The Tablet
Good emerges from evil
War in Ukraine
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