Pope John Paul II Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Persian Gulf War === Between 1990 and 1991, a 34-nation coalition led by the United States waged a war against [[Saddam Hussein]]'s [[Iraq]], which had invaded and annexed [[Kuwait]]. John Paul II was a staunch opponent of the [[Gulf War]]. Throughout the conflict, he appealed to the international community to stop the war, and after it was over led diplomatic initiatives to negotiate peace in the Middle East.<ref>{{cite news |agency=Times Wire Services |url=http://articles.latimes.com/1991-04-01/news/mn-1253_1_gulf-war |title=Pontiff's Message Condemns Destruction of Gulf War |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=1 April 1991 |access-date=22 November 2013}}</ref> In his 1991 encyclical [[Centesimus annus|Centesimus Annus]], John Paul II harshly condemned the conflict: <blockquote>"No, never again war, which destroys the lives of innocent people, teaches how to kill, throws into upheaval even the lives of those who do the killing and leaves behind a trail of resentment and hatred, thus making it all the more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which provoked the war."<ref>{{cite news |author=Drew Christiansen, SJ |url=http://americamagazine.org/issue/398/article/hawks-doves-and-pope-john-paul-ii |title=Hawks, Doves, and Pope John Paul II |work=[[America (Jesuit magazine)|America]] |date=12 August 2002 |access-date=22 November 2013}}</ref></blockquote> In April 1991, during his ''[[Urbi et Orbi]]'' Sunday message at [[St. Peter's Basilica]], John Paul II called for the international community to "lend an ear" to "the long-ignored aspirations of oppressed peoples". He specifically named the [[Kurds]], a people who were fighting a civil war against Saddam Hussein's troops in Iraq, as one such people, and referred to the war as a "darkness menacing the earth". During this time, the Vatican had expressed its frustration with the international ignoring of the pope's calls for peace in the Middle East.<ref>{{cite news |author=Clyde Haberman |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/01/world/pope-denounces-the-gulf-war-as-darkness.html |title=Pope Denounces Gulf War As 'Darkness' |newspaper=The New York Times |date=1 April 1991 |access-date=22 November 2013}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page