In his brief but eventful one-day trip to Sarajevo on June 6, Pope Francis called upon the citizens of the war-torn country of Bosnia-Herzogovena to leave their ethnic wars in the past and become peace makers for the future.

According to the Vatican Information Service, the Pope’s trip  lasted only a day but was packed with activities including a meeting with members of the Bosnia-Herzegovina presidency at the presidential palace, a meeting with youth at the John Paul II Cultural Center and an open-air Mass at a stadium which was attended by tens of thousands of people.

Bosnia is a predominantly Muslim nation where tensions between Muslims, Catholics and Orthodox Christians erupted into a full scale ethnic and religious war in the 1990s that resulted in the death of 150,000 people. Most of the dead were the victims of cruel ethnic cleansing campaigns.

The horrors of the war were especially pronounced during his visit with religious where he met with Fr. Zvonimir Matijević who was captured during the war and tortured so cruelly he now has multiple sclerosis.

Another victim, Sr. Ljubica Šekerija of the Sisters of Divine Charity, was captured and beaten by Muslim forces who demanded that she convert to Islam. At one point, her captors commanded a priest to crush her rosary beads but she begged him not to and said she would rather die than see a blessed object profaned.

Later, while speaking to the nation’s youth, who are faced with a crisis of moral values and a diminished sense of purpose in life, Francis urged them also to find strength in their faith to meet the demands of life.

“Some young people may give in to the temptation to flee, or become self-absorbed, taking refuge in alcohol, drugs, or ideologies which preach hatred and violence,” he said. “These are realities which I know well, he added, because they were “unfortunately also present in Buenos Aires, where I come from.”

Instead, the Pope urged the youth let the strength of their Christian faith “flourish without fear”, enabling them to “sow seeds of a more just, fraternal, welcoming and peaceful society”.

He continued this theme later in an open-air Mass attended by 60,000 people.

Speaking in Italian, with his words translated into Croatian, the pope reminded that “Peace is God’s dream, his plan for humanity, for history, for all creation. And it is a plan which always meets opposition from men and from the evil one.”

Referring to the many conflicts presently affecting our world, which he called “a kind of third world war being fought piecemeal”, he denounced what he sees as an atmosphere of war.

“Some wish to incite and foment this atmosphere deliberately, mainly those who want conflict between different cultures and societies, and those who speculate on wars for the purpose of selling arms. But war means children, women and the elderly in refugee camps; it means forced displacement of peoples; it means destroyed houses, streets and factories; it means, above all, countless shattered lives. You know this well, having experienced it here: how much suffering, how much destruction, how much pain! Today, dear brothers and sisters, the cry of God’s people goes up once again from this city, the cry of all men and women of good will: no more war!”

But within this atmosphere of war, the words of Jesus shine like a ray of sunshine piercing the clouds.

“'Blessed are the peacemakers'. This appeal is always applicable, in every generation. He does not say: 'Blessed are the preachers of peace', since all are capable of proclaiming peace, even in a hypocritical, or indeed duplicitous, manner. No. He says: 'Blessed are the peacemakers', that is, those who make peace.

“Crafting peace is a skilled work: it requires passion, patience, experience and tenacity. Blessed are those who sow peace by their daily actions, their attitudes and acts of kindness, of fraternity, of dialogue, of mercy... These, indeed, 'shall be called children of God', for God sows peace, always, everywhere . . .”

How does one sow peace in today’s world? By practicing the virtue of justice.

“Peace is a work of justice. Here too: not a justice proclaimed, imagined, planned ... but rather a justice put into practice, lived out. The Gospel teaches us that the ultimate fulfilment of justice is love: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'. When, by the grace of God, we truly follow this commandment, how things change! Because we ourselves change! Those whom I looked upon as my enemy really have the same face as I do, the same heart, the same soul. We have the same Father in heaven. True justice, then, is doing to others what I would want them to do to me, to my people.”

He went on to quote St. Paul who says 'Put on then ... compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive'.

“These are the attitudes necessary to become artisans of peace precisely where we live out our daily lives. But we should not fool ourselves into thinking that this all depends on us! We would fall into an illusive moralising. Peace is a gift from God, not in the magical sense, but because with his Spirit he can imprint these attitudes in our hearts and in our flesh, and can make us true instruments of his peace.”

Peace is a gift of from God because it is the fruit of His reconciliation with us, the pope said.

“Only if we allow ourselves to be reconciled with God can human beings become artisans of peace.”

He ended with a prayer that we ask the Lord, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, “for the grace to have a simple heart, the grace of patience, the grace to struggle and work for justice, to be merciful, to work for peace, to sow peace and not war and discord. This is the way which brings happiness, which leads to blessedness.”

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