In recent years, the world is witnessing a worrying phenomenon: the habit of war. Mass psychological campaigns, aimed at presenting catastrophe as a normal horizon, are turning conflict into a routine of international politics. Modern wars, like the current ones, are no longer subject to popular control, but are dominated by autocrats, dictators and economic interests.

The media and moral anaesthesia

The media, instead of being a wave of critical reflection, often merely describe who wins, who loses, who advances or retreats. The dead, the injured, the destroyed cities become cold numbers, far removed from human reality. This depiction contributes to emptying the war of its meaning of pain and destruction. Reports on the war in Ukraine or Gaza, often devoid of pathos, reduce the massacre to a chronicle.

However, not all journalists conform to this trend. Some continue to illustrate the facts of war with intellectual honesty, allowing readers to construct an opinion and thus be able to make an ethical, not just a political or economic assessment.

The Role of Politics and the Media in Fear

When European politicians speak of a threat of aggression, of nuclear war as if it were imminent, hundreds of thousands of people feel frightened and seek reassurance. It is understandable! Perhaps we can exercise a little malice and suspect that behind these words lies political manipulation. Every time you turn on the radio or television, the message is clear: arm yourself, prepare for the worst. But is this really necessary, or is it a strategy to justify dangerous choices? This is the question that distresses me.

Pope Francis and the moral alarm

Pope Francis is in no doubt: the world is immersed in a psychological campaign that normalises war and urges people to accept disaster as inevitable. His encyclicals urge Catholics and all people of good will to reject this manipulation, not to accept the political correctness that erases the reality of war as a crime against humanity.

Peace: a concept to be rediscovered

The issue of peace is now confined to the margins of public debate and those who continue to believe in it are accused of being naive or utopian. The emphasis is now on war, on rearmament, and this has two very serious consequences.

The first is that the word ‘peace’ has been emptied of its political, generative and human meaning, reduced to a mere interval between conflicts. War and not peace has become the ‘natural’ element of social life and the human condition, and therefore accepted as ineradicable.

The second consequence is that political, social and religious efforts have focused on limiting and legitimising acts of war, on deterring and regulating conflicts, rather than on preventing them.

A necessary turning point

Peace must return to the centre of political and social discourse. This is the demand of the majority of citizens, tired of seeing the world plunge into an abyss of violence and destruction.

It is time to refuse to let the idea of the ‘just’ war and warlike conflict be the dominant perspective. In a world that seems to have lost its moral compass, peace is not a utopia, but a necessity. And we all have a duty to fight to make it possible.

See, Rendere la pace una condizione permanente di vita