Increasing Military Budgets And Imposing Sanctions Is Not A Solution To War – Pope Francis

Pope Francis has issued strong criticism against countries for increasing military spending as Russia’s onslaught of Ukraine continues, branding it “madness.” 

Speaking on Thursday to an audience with the Italian Women’s Center in Rome, the Pope blamed the “shameful” war in Ukraine on the “old logic of power that still dominates the so-called geopolitics.”

He dismissed sanctions and weapons as a solution to the conflict and said the world should redesign its way of governing so that it is not subject to “economic-technocratic-military power.”

“It is now clear that good politics cannot come from the culture of power understood as domination and oppression, but only from a culture of care, care for the person and their dignity and care for our common home,” he said.

“The real answer … is not other weapons, other sanctions, other political-military alliances, but another approach, a different way of governing the now globalized world — not showing the teeth, as now — one way different than set international relations. The model of treatment is already in place, thank God, but unfortunately it is still subject to that of the economic-technocratic-military power,” the Pope said.