Pope Francis prayed for peace in the Holy Land and across the world in his annual Urbi et Orbi message.
Welcoming “the joy born of being God’s beloved sons and daughters”, the Pope said that “an undying flame has been lighted” which defies the “deep shadows” in Bethlehem.
Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem are severely curtailed this year with no festivities in Manger Square, where a nativity scene surrounded by debris and barbed wire has taken the place of a Christmas tree.
The papal almoner Cardinal Konrad Krajewski joined the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa in the city for the first vespers of Christmas, to express the Pope’s solidarity with the Holy Land.
In his address in Rome, Pope Francis demanded a “no” to war and to arms dealing, which he said promoted violence. He condemned “the interests and the profits that mover the puppet strings of war”.
He expressed his grief for “the victims of the abominable attack of 7 October” in Israel and made an “urgent appeal for the liberation of those still being held hostage”.
He also called for “an end to the military operations with their appalling harvest of innocent civilian victims” in Gaza and for aid supplies to remedy “the desperate humanitarian situation”.
In his homily for Mass in St Peter’s on Christmas Eve, Pope Francis remembered the victims of the war in the Holy Land.
“Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world.”
His homily considered the census that brought the Holy Family to Bethlehem, which he said belonged to “the quest for worldly power and might, fame and glory, which measures everything in terms of success, results, numbers and figures, a world obsessed with achievement”.
This was unlike the God who “does not eliminate injustice from above by a show of power, but from below, by a show of love” and “who is beyond all human reckoning and yet allows himself to be numbered by our accounting”.
Considering the gift of the Incarnation, he quoted a 1941 letter of J.R.R. Tolkien to his son describing the Blessed Sacrament as a source of “romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth”.
The Urbi et Orbi address included prayer for all “little Jesuses” who die “in their mothers’ wombs, in odysseys undertaken in desperation and in search of hope, in the lives of all those little ones whose childhood has been devastated by war”.
The Pope prayed for peace elsewhere in the Middle East, including in Lebanon and Syria, and for “the embattled people of Ukraine”.
He also prayed for peace across the war-torn regions of Africa and between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and for “dialogue and reconciliation” to foster “fraternal bonds” on the Korean peninsula.
Ahead of the Jubilee Year in 2025, Pope Francis prayed for the “conversion of hearts, for the rejection of war and the embrace of peace”.
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