Iran Cardinal, Dominique Joseph Mathieu, said that the war between this nation and Israel “is not the solution” and that it would be better for the parties to “return to the negotiating table.”
The war “is not the solution. Perhaps it would be better for the parties to return to the negotiating table, so we commit to pray intensely,” said Tehran Archbishop in an interview with Vatican News This June 20.
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“These days I can experience that many people have expressed their closeness to me. Thank you very much to everyone. We pray for you, we pray for us, united in Christ who saved the world shedding his blood,” said the purple.
The Cardinal described later that he is now “before collateral victims: displaced, injured, dead. In both countries there are numerous civil victims, both intentional and involuntary.”
From the capital of Iran, which has been the target of the Israeli bombings, Cardinal Mathieu says that six days of initiates clashes with Israel, there seems to be, despite everything, some normality: “The Internet connection has recently been restored, the sun shines and the birds sing, the temperatures are pleasant”, but at night “the air defense is more active than ever.”
“In the background, all this is reassuring because there are no shelters here where to take refuge or sirens who notify the danger of missiles,” he lamented.
On the bombings, the purple explained that “there is no common border where they can come into contact, so everything develops in the airspace where missiles and drones fight, essentially an asymmetric conflict where the airspace of other nations is systematically violated.”
Regarding the local Christian community, he indicated that some have stayed where they are and others are in safer areas, while some embassies will wait until the weekend to decide whether or not they evacuate definitively.
To conclude, Cardinal Mathieu recalled “the letter to the Ephesians in which it is said that Jesus ‘made both a single people’, demolishing the separation wall that divided them, that is, enmity among us.”
The War Iran – Israel
As reported CNN in Spanishthe president of the United States, Donald Trump, said he will grant two weeks to diplomacy before deciding whether to attack Iran, while celebrating in Geneva (Switzerland), a meeting between officials in Europe and Iran.
This Friday, June 20, Iran launched missiles against Israel, one of which fell in the city of Haifa, north of the country. The launches of both countries have remained at night, for a week.
Benjamín Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, does not rule out attacking the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatolá Ali Khamenei, who has also been challenging against Trump, warning of an “irreparable damage” to the United States if he attacks the Muslim majority nation.
On June 19, Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See, Yaron Sideman, granted a interview with Ewtn News – company that is part of ACI Press – and defended the recent attacks against the nuclear and ballistic missile programs of Iran, ensuring that with this Israel is “avoiding a third World War.”
For his part, Pope Leo XIV renewed his call to peace and dialogue; and regretted the death of “many innocent” because of the conflict.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.