Pope Francis: Spending on Weapons ‘Sullies the Soul’

In this Aug. 22, 2018 file photo, Pope Francis is caught in pensive mood during his weekly
AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File
Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

ROME — Pope Francis railed against spending money on national defense Monday, insisting that expenditure on weapons “sullies the soul.”

“Why wage war on each other over conflicts that we should resolve by talking to each other as fellow people?” the pontiff asked a group of volunteers in the Vatican. “Why not rather join our forces and resources to fight together the real battles of civilization: the fight against hunger and thirst; the fight against disease and epidemics; the fight against poverty and slavery of today. Why?”

“Certain choices are not neutral: to allocate a large part of spending to weapons means taking it away from something else, which means continuing to take it away from those who lack the necessities,” he said. “And this is an outrage: spending on weapons.”

“How much is spent on weapons, terrible!” he continued. “I don’t know what percentage of GDP, I don’t know, I don’t have the exact figure, but a high percentage.”

The problem with armaments, the pope proposed, is that they wind up being used.

Weapons are used in wars, he stated, “not only this one, which is very serious, which we are experiencing now, and we feel it more because it is closer, but in Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia, there are continuous wars. This is serious.”

“We need to create the awareness that continuing to spend on weapons sullies the soul, sullies the heart, sullies humanity,” he exhorted.

What is the use of international campaigns against poverty, against hunger, against the degradation of the planet, “if we then fall back into the old vice of war, into the old strategy of the power of armaments, which takes everything and everyone backwards?” he asked.

“A war always takes you backwards, always. We go backwards. We will have to start over again,” he declared.

On the other hand, both the pope and his second-in-charge, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, have acknowledged Ukraine’s right to defend itself as well as sanctioning Europe’s provision of weapons to Ukraine for this purpose.

It remains unclear how in the pope’s mind nations are supposed to support Ukraine by providing weapons if no money was ever spent manufacturing them.

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