Cardinal Domenico Battaglia of Naples, Italy, penned a scathing denunciation of the “merchants of death” who manufacture and sell weapons.
“To you who do business with the blood of men, to you who count profits while mothers count their children, to you who call ‘strategy’ what the Gospel calls scandal, I address words that are born not from diplomacy, but from the wound,” he wrote in his open letter, published on March 9.
The prelate spoke of a land that “trembles under the steps of the poor, under the cries of children, under the silence of the innocent, under the ferocious noise of the weapons you have built, sold, blessed by your cynicism.”