“It’s necessary that any action, any initiative of goodwill, must lead to a cease-fire. Direct negotiations must be taken up again between the two sides, in such a way that puts an end to this age-old conflict and reaches a solution,” he said.
“The solution ought to be in keeping with the two-state solution, which will enable each of them to live in peace.”
The cardinal made the comments at a book launch at the Italian Embassy to the Holy See’s Palazzo Borromeo. Parolin’s full remarks at the event were published by Exaudi News.
The book is an Italian biography of Mario Agnes, who served as president of Catholic Action and later editor-in-chief of L’Osservatore Romano from 1984 until his retirement in 2007.
“If there is one episode that more than others summarizes Agnes’ attitude towards the theme of peace, it is the title ‘Never again war,’ written in large letters, on the occasion of the Gulf War,” Parolin said in his prepared remarks.
“In a comment published on March 10, 1991, after the ‘cease-fire’ in Iraq while popular uprisings are raging in the country, Agnes stated: ‘In establishing justice and working for peace, one cannot continue to ignore a problem that is at the bottom of many other problems: the indiscriminate trade in arms of all kinds. Unscrupulously arming the poor to fight each other and pretending that this is a non-existent or irrelevant fact is an ignoble action that cries out for vengeance in the sight of God.’”