The pope asks to open humanitarian corridors to welcome Ukrainians fleeing the war

In his homily this Sunday, the Pope Francisco has called on the international community to open humanitarian corridors to welcome people fleeing Ukraine. According to figures provided by UNHCR, there are already more than 368,000 Ukrainians seeking refuge before the Russian invasion.

“Whoever wages war forgets humanity, is not concerned with people’s lives, but rather puts their interests and their desire for power before them. They let themselves be carried away by the diabolical logic of weapons and distance themselves from ordinary people, who want peace. Ordinary people are always the real victims of all conflicts, because he pays with his skin for the madness of war,” Francis said after praying the Angelus from the Vatican’s apostolic palace.

The pontiff added that he thought of “the elderly, those who seek refuge, mothers who flee with their children. They are brothers and sisters for whom it is urgent to open humanitarian corridors and to be welcomed.”

Likewise, Pope Francis explained that “those who love peace, as the Italian Constitution says, repudiate war as an element of offense against the freedom of other peoples and as a means of resolving international controversies” and also remembered other wars in the world, like those of “Yemen, Syria or Ethiopia”.

The Argentine pontiff spoke on Saturday by telephone with the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, to whom he expressed his “deep pain” for the war in the country unleashed by the Russian invasion; while on Friday he personally went to the Russian embassy to the Holy See to see the ambassador, Alexander Avdeev, and later spoke by telephone with the head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, to whom he guaranteed that he will do “all he can” in this situation.