By Carol Glatz • Catholic News Service • Posted January 24, 2024

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis highlighted the importance of remembering and condemning the horror of the Holocaust, underlining that hatred and violence can never be justified.

Praying for all victims of war and their loved ones, the pope also implored everyone, “especially those with political responsibility, to safeguard human life by putting an end to war.”

“Let us not forget that war is always a defeat. The only ones who ‘win’ are weapons manufacturers,” he said at the end of his general audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI hall Jan. 24.

He recalled that Jan. 27 marks International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.

“May the remembrance and condemnation of that horrible extermination of millions of Jews and people of other faiths that took place in the first half of the last century help everyone not to forget that the logic of hatred and violence can never be justified because they deny our very humanity,” he said.

“War itself is a denial of humanity,” the pope said. “Let us not tire of praying for peace, for conflicts to cease, for weapons to be silenced and that exhausted populations receive assistance.”

The pope said he was thinking of the Middle East, Palestine, Israel and “the disturbing news coming out of the tormented Ukraine, especially the bombings hitting places where civilians go, sowing death and destruction and suffering.”

“I pray for the victims and their loved ones,” he said.