Pope highlights dangers threatening world peace

ATHENS

Pope Francis highlighted the dangers that are threatening world peace, the Vatican media reported Friday.

“At the present time, those dangers are many indeed; but I ask myself, thinking not least of war-torn Ukraine, where are creative efforts for peace?,” he said during an address to a distinguished Hungarian audience that included the country’s president, premier, diplomats and senior Christian clergy members in Budapest, according to the Vatican News agency.

“Peace will never come from pursuing strategic interests. It would come from a policy that can keep everyone's interests in mind, paying attention to the people, including the poor and needy” he said.

France then remarked that European leaders look beyond their own age, national borders and immediate needs and create diplomacy that can create unity instead of widening divides.

Furthermore, the pontiff warned of "the nefarious path of 'ideological colonization,’” which eliminates differences, as in the case of the so-called gender culture, that liquidates differences or puts reductive concepts of freedom before the reality of life.

“More effective policies to reverse the decline in birth rate and safeguard families should be developed and enforced,” he said.