Pope Francis’ Message of Healing to a Divided Bosnia

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Coming to a country whose national anthem has no lyrics because its bickering ethnic groups cannot agree on them, Pope Francis on Saturday called for greater religious reconciliation and an end to the sectarian conflicts that still threaten Bosnia and proliferate around the world in “a kind of third world war being fought piecemeal.”

Some in Bosnia and around the world continue to foment “conflict between different cultures and societies” for their own political purposes, others to make profits on arms sales, he said. They ignore the human price paid in lives lost, refugees uprooted and property destroyed.

“You know this well, having experienced it here: how much suffering, how much destruction, how much pain!” Francis said. “The cry of God’s people goes up once again from this city, the cry of all men and women of good will: War never again!”

The pope praised the progress Bosnia has made since the bloody ethnic conflict of the 1990s, and especially since Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1997, when religious tensions were still high.