Former arms dealer backs Pontiff’s plea for peace
December 12, 2024
» Continue to this story on Vatican Press Office
CWN Editor's Note: At a Vatican press conference on December 12 introducing the World Day of Peace message by Pope Francis (see today’s separate CWN news brief), a former arms dealer explained how he had chosen to abandon that business and work for peace.
“When I was an arms manufacturer, I thought war was inherent with the human soul,” said Vito Alfieri Fontana. But eventually “something jams the mechanism,” and questions from children, along with public protests against the use of land mines, led him to reconsider his work. For years now, Fontana has worked to remove the land mines that he once manufactured.
Fontana said, echoing Pope Francis, that “the peace consciousness of ordinary people is being torn apart by lies, unnecessary inequality, fear, and lack of livelihood by playing into the hands of the tiny minority that manages and fuels conflicts of all kinds for its own purposes.”
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