Pope Francis this Sunday issued a new call for an end to the war in Ukraine, urging “heads of state to build peace” in a prayer in Budapest, Hungary, where he is on the last day of his official visit.
“Instill in the hearts of people and leaders of nations the desire to build peace, to give young generations a future of hope, not war; a future full of cradles, not graves; a world of brothers, not of walls”said the pope during the Regina Caeli prayer, which he prayed immediately after the mass he presided over in Kosuth Lajos Square in the Hungarian capital.
The pope has assumed that he has been thinking a lot these days “in the cause of peace” and asked the Blessed Virgin to watch over those who suffer the most. “Look especially at the neighboring and tormented Ukrainian people, and at the Russian people devoted to you”he said.
On the other hand, the pope also drew attention to technology and the impact of algorithms, which “could pose yet another risk to destabilize human beings”.
In a speech reflecting on new technologies, the leader of the Catholic Church during a visit to the Faculty of Informatics and Bionic Sciences of the Catholic University “Péter Pázmány” in Budapest, warned that the use of technology can sometimes lead to “a lack of limits”, in the logic of “it is possible, therefore it is permitted”.
“Let us also consider the desire to be at the center of everything, not the person and his relationships, but the individual, centered on his own needs, eager to accumulate and voracious in understanding reality.” said the pope, emphasizing that “community ties” can be compromised: “How many isolated individuals, highly socially networked and not very social, resort, as if in a vicious circle, to the comfort of technology to fill the void?”.
Although he emphasized not wanting to be pessimistic, as this would be contrary to his beliefs, Pope Francis warned of the “arrogance of being and having,” citing Robert Benson’s book “The Lord of the World,” which describes “a future dominated by technology and in which everything, in the name of progress, is standardized is”o”, in a humanism that suppresses differences and helps to abolish religions.
“With the help of science, we not only want to understand, we also want to do the right thing, that is, build a humane and solidarity-based civilization, a sustainable culture and a sustainable environment,” he added.
to emphasize the fact that “Hungary has witnessed a succession of ‘isms’ that have imposed themselves as truth, but have not given freedom,” the pope spoke of the transition from communism to consumerism.
“In both ‘isms’ there is a false idea of freedom: that of communism was a forced freedom, limited from the outside, determined by someone; that of consumerism is a libertarian, hedonistic, flattened freedom, enslaving us to consumption and so,” he noted, ending without ceasing in the defense of knowledge intertwined with love, humility and a community and constructive spirit.
Source: DN
