Pope Francis expressed his optimism on Sunday that the upcoming Paris Olympics, set to commence on Friday, could serve as a catalyst for temporary ceasefires in ongoing global conflicts.<\/p>\n
The Pope’s remarks highlighted the potential for the international sporting event to bring nations together and promote peace, even if only for a brief period.<\/p>\n
By invoking the ancient Olympic tradition of declaring a truce during the Games, Pope Francis encouraged world leaders to seize this opportunity to lay down arms and work towards a more harmonious world.<\/p>\n
The Pope, who said this during his weekly address to the crowd in St Peter\u2019s Square, urged athletes to be messengers of peace and models for young people.<\/p>\n
The games will start on Friday with an opening ceremony on the River Seine featuring about 10,500 athletes and over 100 heads of state and government.<\/p>\n
Pope Francis said he hoped that \u201caccording to the ancient tradition, the Olympics will be an opportunity to establish a truce in wars by demonstrating a sincere desire for peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
He mentioned the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar and other countries, saying, \u201cLet us not forget war is a defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, the final statement of a Group of Seven (G7) leaders\u2019 meeting held in Italy included a unanimous call for a truce in global conflicts during the Olympic Games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pope Francis expressed his optimism on Sunday that the upcoming Paris Olympics, set to commence on Friday, could serve as a catalyst for temporary ceasefires in ongoing global conflicts. The Pope’s remarks highlighted the potential for the international sporting event to bring nations together and promote peace, even if only for a brief period. By […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":39797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39798,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39795\/revisions\/39798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}