VATICAN CITY, March 20: The Vatican lashed out on Thursday at Washington for interrupting diplomacy as churches around the world stood united in deploring the war in Iraq.
“The Vatican is deeply pained by the latest developments in Iraq,” Vatican chief spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, one of Pope John Paul’s closest aides, said in a statement. “On the one hand it laments the fact that the Iraqi government did not accept the resolutions of the United Nations and the appeal by the Pope himself, which asked for the country to disarm. On the other hand, it deplores the interruption of the path of negotiations, according to international law, for a peaceful solution to the Iraqi drama.”
The Vatican’s despair was echoed by Britain’s Christian and Muslim leaders, who also led efforts to prevent the war.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of some 70 million Anglicans worldwide, said in a joint statement with the Archbishop of York, David Hope, that the world had entered “dangerous new terrain with consequences that cannot be surely known or predicted”.
The umbrella group Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) and The Muslim Council of Britain, took a tougher stand in a joint statement.
“In this time of crisis and deep disappointment, it is vitally important that, despite the occasional unhappy use of ‘crusade’ language by some American political leaders, none should see the conflict as one between faiths.”
In Geneva, the World Council of Churches, which links 342 churches in 100 countries, condemned the US attack as “immoral, illegal and ill-advised”. The group called on Christian churches to cooperate with people of other faiths, especially Muslims, “to restore confidence and trust amongst the nations of the world”.
To head off inter-religious tension, Anglican bishops in some British cities invited Muslims to hold Friday prayers in Christian cathedrals rather than mosques.
The Vatican, too, has been very worried that the conflict may harm relations between religions, particularly in Muslim countries where Christians are in a minority. It said the Vatican’s embassy in Baghdad would remain open despite the conflict in order to help oversee Catholic charitable efforts for Iraqis caught up in the war.
In Bosnia, the Council of Islamic Community said the attack on Iraq should not be seen as provocation for a religious war and called on all Muslims “not to fall victims to possible provocations”.
Lutheran leaders in Germany and Scandinavia denounced the war and expressed concern for the plight of refugees. In Germany, home of the Protestant Reformation, church bells were set to ring across the country in a huge number of planned services on Thursday evening.
In Iran, which fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, imams denounced the Iraqi regime but also took the United States to task for its support of Israel.
“It is obvious that America in this war is trying to strengthen Zionists in the region,” Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani was quoted as saying by Iranian state radio.—Reuters
