Pope Francis, through the historical events that have marked his life, highlights in the memoir the profound divisions that humanity has faced in the past century. Francis describes learning as a child the “folly of war” and the importance of ensuring genocide of the Jewish people never be repeated. “The Shoah teaches us that maximum vigilance is required if we don’t want to arrive too late when the peace and dignity of human beings are under attack,” he said.
“History repeats itself,” the pope said, with racism and discrimination returning time again in new contexts and situations. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States impressed in the pope’s mind that “the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is a crime against humanity, against human dignity, and against any possibility of a future in our shared home.”
Francis describes silently praying at the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz in 2016 and at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2019. In 2015, he would also pray at Ground Zero, remembering when on Sept. 11, 2001, for the first time, “the United States, known to be one of the world’s great powers, had been attacked.”
Combatting the Islamophobic sentiment that followed the attack, Francis said, inspired his decision to co-sign a historic document in 2019 on human fraternity with the Grand Imam of Al-Ahzar, Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb.
The financial crisis of 2008 led the pope to question “the sick mentality of people who tried, and are still trying today, to bleed the weakest among us dry, to make money out of money.”
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and enthusiasm filled the streets of Argentina, Francis said he learned the power of walls and the importance of bringing them down, telling Ragona, “How beautiful the world would be if there were bridges instead of barriers.”
“Wherever there are walls, on the other hand, we see the proliferation of mafias, criminal behavior, dishonest scoundrels exploiting people’s weakness and subjecting them to fear and loneliness. We are Christians! So we must love our neighbors unconditionally, without borders, without limits of any kind, going beyond the walls of selfishness and personal or national interests, ” Francis said.
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