Pope Urges Spread of ‘Contagious’ Peace in Strife-Torn World

The Pope took a hard look at the world Monday and found it wanting: A globe starkly divided between a few peaceful rich countries and vast have-not regions plagued by poverty and crisis isn’t safe for anyone, he warned.

Pope John Paul II told ambassadors from about 150 countries that it is the moral responsibility of national leaders to overcome corruption with principle and good government and to forge “contagious” peace where there is violence.

“There are still rising today from this world too many cries of despair and pain, the cries of our brothers and sisters crushed by war, injustices, unemployment, poverty and loneliness,” he said.

Speaking French for his annual state-of-the-world message, the Pope outlined regions and issues of Vatican concern, sounding calls for the support of strife-torn societies around the globe.

“International solidarity becomes all the more urgent, as the world in the first days of 1995 appears sharply divided into areas of wealth and peace and regions plagued by crisis, poverty and even war. All this represents a continuing threat to global stability,” the 74-year-old pontiff said.

Delivered in the Vatican’s baroque and imposing Sala Regia on the eve of an 11-day papal trip to Asia, the speech presages one that John Paul is scheduled to make in New York next autumn on the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.

“I am convinced that although war and violence are, alas! contagious, peace is equally so. Let us give it every chance!” the Pope urged envoys accredited to the Holy See. He hailed historic reconciliations in parts of the world where disputes seemed intractable not long ago: the Middle East, South Africa and Northern Ireland.

Bosnia, the nearest fire burning, drew particular attention from the Pope, who has repeatedly appealed for peace there and was bitterly disappointed in September when security concerns forced him to cancel a long-hoped-for visit to Sarajevo, the former Yugoslav republic’s besieged capital.

“Very near to us, in the winter cold, the peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina continue to suffer in their own flesh the consequences of a pitiless war,” the Pope told the dark-suited diplomats.

“Faced with this tragedy, which in a way seems like the shipwreck of the whole of Europe, neither ordinary citizens nor political leaders can remain indifferent or neutral,” he said. “There are aggressors and there are victims. International law and humanitarian law are being violated. All of this demands a firm and united reaction on the part of the community of nations.”

The Pope expressed the hope that a current, tenuous cease-fire could grow into “serious negotiations,” warning that international law would never countenance “results obtained by force alone.”

John Paul also called for negotiations to resolve conflict between Russia and Chechnya, and he deplored Muslim fundamentalist violence in Algeria, calling it “a brute force which is not even sparing the small Catholic community. There too it is necessary that a way be speedily found to work out means for indispensable national dialogue,” he said. Terrorists killed four Roman Catholic priests in Algeria last month.

In Africa, John Paul lamented, “violence and hatred remain a temptation and an easy solution.” He decried uncertainty and “still-smoldering fires” in Liberia, Somalia, southern Sudan, Angola, Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire.

“We cannot allow a great continent like Africa to go adrift,” John Paul warned the diplomats.

As for Asia, the pontiff cautioned that greater material wealth should never come “at the expense of human rights,” noting that Catholics in China and Vietnam “still do not enjoy satisfactory conditions for practicing their faith fully.”

John Paul leaves Wednesday for Manila, where he will attend an international youth conference. He then will journey to Papua New Guinea, Australia and Sri Lanka.