End 'useless slaughter' of war, says Pope

BY STAFF REPORTER
POPE BENEDICT XVI has called for an end to the "useless slaughter" of war and asked that "the rule of law" replace recourse to weapons.
When people succumb "to the temptations of evil" and launch violent conflicts and wars, "this stupendous garden that is the world" is opened up to hell, he said.
The Pope made his appeal for peace on Sunday before reciting the midday Angelus prayer with thousands of pilgrims gathered in the main square of the northeastern Italian town nestled in the Dolomite Alps, where the Pope is spending his holiday. The peace and tranquillity of this Alpine region has sharpened "the painful impact of the news I receive about the bloody conflicts and violent events happening in many parts of the world," he said.
"The beauty of nature reminds us that we were told by God to cultivate and care for this garden that is the earth. If humanity lived in peace with God and each other, the earth would really look like a paradise."
War, which leaves "grief and destruction in its wake, has always been rightly considered a calamity that clashes with God's plan" of giving life and making inatildnd one family, he said.
Pope Benedict recalled the "appalling conflict" of the First World War which raged in the mountains between Italy and Austria. He noted that, in an August 1917 address, the then pope, Benedict XV, appealed to "the heads of warring peoples" to end this "useless slaughter".
Pope Benedict XV condemned not only the war, the Pope said, but showed the way leaders could build "a just and lasting peace" based on "the moral force of law, balanced and verified disarmament", fair negotiations and the restitution of occupied lands.
"These events must not be forgotten," Pope Benedict XVI said, so that "the negative experiences which our fathers unfortunately had to suffer" may never happen again.
Echoing Popes Paul VI and John Paul Ifs calls of "war never again', Pope Benedict condemned as "unacceptable the horrors of useless slaughters".
"I renew the appeal to tenaciously pursue the rule of law, to resolutely refute any recourse to arms, and to reject more widely the temptation of confronting new situations with old systems," he said.
Meanwhile, the US bishops have agreed to meet with a group of Catholic House of Representative Democrats to discuss how to pursue the goal of a "responsible transition" to end the war in Iraq. They also reiterated their call for members of Congress and the Bush administration to break the political stalemate in Washington and "forge bipartisan policies on ways to bring about a responsible transition and an end to the war".
"The current situation in Iraq is unacceptable and unsustainable," wrote Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando, chairman of the Bishops' Committee on International Policy, in a. letter last week to Tun Ryan, a Democrat fiom Ohio.
Bishop Wenslci's letter was a response to a letter Mr Ryan wrote to Bishop Wenski and Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, the bishops' conference president. Mr Ryan's letter, sent on behalf of himself and 13 other Catholic House Democrats, urged the bishops to increase their involvement in efforts to end the warmn Iraq.
Bishop Wenski said the bishops shared his concern for the dangerous and deteriorating situation, and would welcome the opportunity to meet to "discuss ways to pursue the goal of a 'responsible transition' to bring an end to the war".
"Too many Iraqi and American lives have been lost," he wrote. "Too many Iraqi communities have been shattered. Too many civilians have been driven from their homes."