Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, warned against efforts “to contextualize and downplay” the Pope’s statements against war.

“In the footsteps of his immediate predecessors, particularly St. John Paul II, Pope Francis repeats that war is an adventure of no return,” said Tornielli, who lamented an “accelerated arms race following the war of aggression unleashed by Vladimir Putin against Ukraine … The politics for Western governments consists in deciding to increase the already many billions spent on new and increasingly sophisticated weapons. Billions that could not be spent on families, healthcare, work, hospitality, to fight poverty and hunger.”