Cardinal Parolin: Preventive wars risk setting the world ablaze

“This erosion of international law is truly worrying: justice has given way to force; the force of law has been replaced by the law of force.”

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, spoke on Wednesday to Vatican News about the ongoing war in the Middle East.

In the following interview, he expressed concern that “a multipolarism marked by the primacy of power and self-referentiality is dangerously taking hold.”

With great sorrow, because the peoples of the Middle East—including the already fragile Christian communities—have once again been plunged into the horror of war, which brutally shatters human lives, brings destruction, and drags entire nations into spirals of violence with uncertain outcomes.

On Sunday at the Angelus, the Pope spoke of a “tragedy of enormous proportions” and the risk of an “irreparable abyss.” Those are more than eloquent words to describe the moment we are going through.