The Pope warns Trump: "God is not on the side of those who launch bombs"

Pope Leo XVI sent a message this Friday to the North American president, Donald Trump. "God does not bless any conflict," stated the pontiff, who assures that those who are "disciples of Christ" are never on the side of those who "launch bombs." In a meeting at the Vatican with members of the Synod of the Chaldean Church of Baghdad, he declared that "it will not be military actions that create spaces of freedom or times of peace, but those of the people."In a harsh speech, the Pope told the bishops that they are signs of hope "in a world marked by absurd and inhumane violence," driven "by greed and hatred." These attributes, he added, "extend with ferocity precisely to the lands that saw salvation born, to the sacred places of the Christian East, profaned by the blasphemy of war and the brutality of business, without any consideration for the lives of people, considered, in the best of cases, as a collateral effect of their own interests."With a focus on the "sacred places of the Christian East, profaned by the blasphemy of war and the brutality of business," the pontiff made a call for "true religious freedom" to be enjoyed throughout the region, without being treated "as guests or second-class citizens."