Pope warns world headed to bigger war

Vatican : Pope Francis made one of his most emotional anti-war addresses yesterday, saying during a visit to a US military cemetery that the world seemed to be headed into war perhaps bigger than any before.

Francis said a Mass for several thousand people at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in the town of Nettuno, south of the Italian capital, on the day Roman Catholics commemorate their dead.

The burial ground is the final resting place for 7,860 American soldiers who died in the liberation of southern Italy and Rome in 1943 and 1944.

He walked slowly and alone amid the rows of low white headstones in the shape of crosses and Stars of David, gently resting a white rose on about a dozen and stopping to pray silently before saying the Mass.

“Please Lord, stop. No more wars. No more of these useless massacres,” he said, speaking in hushed tones in an improvised homily.

Francis said that remembering the many young people who died in second world war was even more important “today that the world once more is at war and is preparing to go even more forcefully into war.”

He did not elaborate but appeared to be referring to the possibility of nuclear war.