ROME – Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, celebrated Mass for Pope Francis’s health and recovery today, praying for the Pontiff’s swift return from his month-long hospitalisation.
Reflecting on the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew, Cardinal Parolin also condemned what he said is a rhetoric of hatred among people that leads to violence, and called for a greater sense of fraternity and reconciliation.
It has been said many times, he said, “that to seek peace we must first of all disarm language, don’t use aggressive, offensive language in the face of others … it is there, the Lord reminds us, that the war begins: words of contempt and hatred toward others.”
