Pope condemns terrorism as ‘moral perversion’
Benedict stressed the need for forgiveness and reconciliation to bring peace in armed conflicts around the world. And he told the ambassadors that wealthy countries must do more for the world’s poor. Even half of what they spend on weapons “would be more than sufficient to liberate the immense masses of the poor from destitution.”
Benedict described a global “clash of civilisations” taking root and said the danger was made even greater by terrorism, whose causes he attributed to politics as well as “aberrant religious ideas.” “No situation can justify such criminal activity, which covers the perpetrators with infamy, and it is all the more deplorable when it hides behind religion, thereby bringing the pure truth of God down to the level of the terrorists’ own blindness and moral perversion,” he said.
