Religion should not be used as a pillar of power, Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church urged at a forum of religious leaders in Nursultan, the capital of Kazakhstan, on Wednesday.
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“We never condone violence. We never allow the sacred to be used by the profane. The sacred must never be a pillar of power, nor must power be a pillar of the sacred ”, the Pope said.
“Remembering the mistakes and failures of the past, let us join forces to ensure that the Almighty is never taken prisoner of the human thirst for power,” Francis urged.
“Let us free ourselves from humiliating and destructive ideas that insult the word of God with harshness, extremism and forms of fundamentalism and profane it with hatred, fanaticism and terrorism,” he said.
“So let’s dedicate ourselves to insisting even more on the need to resolve conflicts not with the imperfect means of power, with weapons and with threats, but only with means blessed by heaven and worthy of the human being – with contacts, dialogues and patients negotiations ”, the Pope urged.
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