The Pope: the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion

"Peace is first and foremost a gift. To this end, I invite you to reflect on the fact that there will be no peace without putting an end to the war humanity makes on itself when it discards the weak, when it excludes the poor, when it remains indifferent to the refugee and the oppressed. Only those who care for the smallest can do truly great things. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, saint of the least and Nobel Peace Prize winner, stated in this regard that 'the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion'. Her voice remains prophetic: no policy can place itself at the service of peoples if it excludes from life those who are about to come into the world, if it does not come to the aid of those who are in material and spiritual need". This was said by Pope Leo receiving in audience the participants at the conference 'One Humanity, One Planet'.

"In times wounded by so much injustice, violence and war," Prevost said, we must remember that "peace is above all a gift, because we receive it from those who precede us in history: it is a good for which we must give thanks. Peace is a covenant, which entrusts us with a common commitment: that of honouring it, when it exists, and of realising it, when it is lacking. Finally, peace is a promise, because it sustains our hope for a better world, and as such is sought by all people of good will'.

"Politics plays an irreplaceable social function here: I therefore urge you," the Pope stressed, "to cooperate more and more in the study of participatory forms that involve all citizens, men and women, in the institutional life of States. On this basis, it will be possible to build that universal fraternity that is already announced among you young people as a sign of a new time: your work, in fact, finds its highest expression when it works for a humanity pacified in justice," Prevost concluded.