At rally of
young people in Turin, Francis issues his toughest condemnation to date of the
weapons industry, criticising investors as well as workers
The Guardian, Reuters, Monday 22 June 2015
 |
| Pope Francis arrives in Turin on 21 June: ‘If you trust only men you have lost,’ he says. Photograph: Massimo Pinca/AP |
People who
manufacture weapons or invest in weapons industries are hypocrites if they call
themselves Christian, Pope Francis said on Sunday.
Francis
issued his toughest condemnation to date of the weapons industry at a rally of
thousands of young people at the end of the first day of his trip to the
Italian city of Turin.
“If you
trust only men you have lost,” he told the young people in a longcommentary
about war, trust and politics, after putting aside his prepared address.
“It makes
me think of ... people, managers, businessmen who call themselves Christian and
they manufacture weapons. That leads to a bit of distrust, doesn’t it?” he said
to applause.
He also
criticised those who invest in weapons industries, saying “duplicity is the
currency of today ... they say one thing and do another.”
Francis
also built on comments he has made in the past about events during the first
and second world wars. He spoke of the “tragedy of the Shoah”, using the Hebrew
term for the Holocaust.
“The great
powers had the pictures of the railway lines that brought the trains to the
concentration camps like Auschwitz to kill Jews, Christians, homosexuals,
everybody. Why didn’t they bomb (the railway lines)?”
Discussing
the first world war, he spoke of “the great tragedy of Armenia”, but did not
use the word “genocide”. Francis sparked a diplomatic row in April, calling the
massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians 100 years ago “the first genocide of
the 20th century”, prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador to the Vatican.
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