Pope Leo blasted leaders who spend billions on wars and said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants”, in unusually forceful \u200cremarks in Cameroon this Thursday after United States (US) President Donald Trump attacked him again on social media.<\/p>\n
Pope\u00a0 the first US Pope, also decried leaders who used religious language to justify wars and urged a “decisive change of course” in a meeting in the biggest city in Cameroon’s anglophone regions, where a simmering conflict going back nearly a decade has left thousands dead.<\/p>\n
“The masters of war pretend not to know \u200bthat it takes only a moment to destroy, yet often a lifetime is not enough to rebuild,” the pontiff said.<\/p>\n
“They turn a blind eye to \u200bthe fact that billions of Dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are \u2060nowhere to be found.”<\/p>\n
Trump’s attacks on Pope, first launched on the eve of the pope’s ambitious four-country tour of Africa and repeated late Tuesday, \u200bhave caused dismay in Africa, where more than a fifth of the world’s Catholics live.<\/p>\n
Pope, who kept a relatively low profile for most of his first year as leader of \u200bthe 1.4-billion-member Church, has emerged as an outspoken critic of the war that began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the pontiff sharply criticised leaders who invoked religious themes to justify wars.<\/p>\n
“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It is a world \u200bturned upside down, an exploitation of God\u2019s creation that must be denounced and rejected by every honest conscience.”<\/p>\n
The Pope made similar remarks last month, saying God rejected prayers \u200bfrom leaders with “hands full of blood”, in comments widely interpreted as aimed at US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has invoked Christian language to justify the Iran war.<\/p>\n
Trump began his criticism of Pope on \u200cSunday, when \u2060he called the pope “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” in a post on Truth Social.<\/p>\n
Trump attacked him again on social media late on Tuesday, and on Wednesday Trump posted an image of Jesus embracing him, after an earlier image he posted that portrayed him as a Jesus-like figure prompted widespread criticism.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21637,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-32132","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"On Thursday, the pontiff sharply criticised leaders who invoked religious themes to justify wars.","published_date":"","news_description":"On Thursday, the pontiff sharply criticised leaders who invoked religious themes to justify wars.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32135,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32132\/revisions\/32135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=32132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}