“Religions must never be instrumentalized, nor can they ever lend support to, or approve of, conflicts and disagreements”. Pope Francis said this during the meeting he had yesterday in Baku with the President of the Council of the Muslims in the Caucasus, and the local religious leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church and of the Jewish Communities. “God cannot be used for personal interests and selfish ends; He cannot be used to justify any form of fundamentalism, imperialism or colonialism”, Pope Francis remarked: “No more violence in the name of God! May his most holy Name be adored, not profaned or bartered as a commodity through forms of hatred and human opposition”. Prayer and dialogue are the weapons of religions, the Pope explained: “Dialogue with others and a path of prayer for all: these are our means of turning spears into pruning hooks, to give rise to love where there is hatred, and forgiveness where there is offence, of never growing weary of imploring and tracing the ways of peace. A true peace, founded on mutual respect, encounter and sharing, on the will to go beyond prejudices and past wrongs, on the rejection of double standards and self-interests; a lasting peace, animated by the courage to overcome barriers, to eradicate poverty and injustice, to denounce and put an end to the proliferation of weapons and immoral profiteering on the backs of others”. “The blood of far too many people cries out to God from the earth, our common home”, Pope Francis stated: “Today, we are challenged to give a response that can no longer be put off: to build together a future of peace; now is not the time for violent or abrupt solutions, but rather an urgent moment to engage in patient processes of reconciliation. The real question of our time is not how to advance our own causes – this is not the real question -, but what proposals for life are we offering to future generations; how to leave them a better world than the one we have received. God, and history itself, will ask us if we have spent ourselves pursuing peace; the younger generations, who dream of a different future, pointedly direct this question to us”. Pope Francis’ address ended with this hope: “In this night of conflict that we are currently enduring, may religions be a dawn of peace, seeds of rebirth amid the devastation of death, echoes of dialogue resounding unceasingly, paths to encounter and reconciliation reaching even those places where official mediation efforts seem not to have borne fruit”. Then a final encouragement to the lands he has visited these days: “Particularly in this beloved Caucasus region, which I have very much wished to visit and to which I have come as a pilgrim of peace, may religions be active agents working to overcome the tragedies of the past and the tensions of the present”.