The “industry of death” exists in the world as many people in power live off war, Pope Francis told Italian schoolkids in the Vatican on Monday.
“Many powerful people don’t want peace because they live off war,” the Pontiff said as he met with pupils from Rome’s primary schools in the Nervi Audience Hall.
Talking to children during the audience organized by the Peace Factory Foundation, he explained that every war has the arms industry behind it.
“This is serious. Some powerful people make their living with the production of arms and sell them to one country for them to use against another country,” the Pope was cited by AGI news agency as saying.
The head of the Catholic Church labeled the arms trade “the industry of death, the greed that harms us all, the desire to have more money.“
“The economic system orbits around money and not men, women,” he told 7,000 kids present at the audience.
Despite the fact that wars “lose lives, health, education,” they are being waged to defend money and make even more profit, the Pope said.
“The devil enters through greed and this is why they don’t want peace,” 78-year-old Francis said.
“There can be no peace without justice,” the Pope said and asked the children to repeat those words out loud three times.
Say it loud I’m white and I’m proud, just tell the kids the name of the countries, the people who are behind these industries of war, all the presidents visiting the pope…let them repeat the words….I’m a war criminal…say it loud and repeat it more than three times of op zijn Nederlands het wordt tijd dat de paus niet alleen tegen kinderen praat maar ook tegen al die volwassen moordenaars die profiteren van wereldse conflicten, en het doelbewust aanjagen, opvoeren, én uitvoeren.
Voortaan iedere Kennedy, Bush en Blair hardop laten herhalen ‘ik ben een oorlogsmisdadiger’.