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Pope Leo lamented a satellite “in flames” owed to wars and the demolition of the situation during an Ash Wednesday Mass, opening the play of Lent for the world’s Christians.
Before sprinkling ashes connected the heads of participants, a motion of mortality, the pope said the ashes could represent “the value of a satellite that is ablaze, of full cities destroyed by war”.
He besides told participants the ashes could signify “the ashes of planetary instrumentality and justness among peoples, (and) the ashes of full ecosystems”.
“It is truthful casual to consciousness powerless successful the look of a world that is successful flames,” said Leo, the archetypal U.S. Pope.
Lent is simply a 40-day play of penance that leads to Easter, the astir important Christian holiday, which celebrates the time connected which believers accidental Jesus roseate from the dead.
It represents the 40 days Jesus is said successful the Bible to person spent fasting successful the desert. During the season, Catholics are asked to fast, retrieve the needy and bespeak connected mortality.
Pope Leo, elected person of the 1.4-billion-member Church successful May to regenerate the precocious Pope Francis, did not notation a circumstantial struggle successful his remarks. The pope has forcefully decried the world’s ongoing wars in his archetypal twelvemonth and denounced what helium called a planetary “zeal for war” successful a large overseas argumentation code past month.
He spoke on Wednesday (February 18, 2026) astatine a work held successful the Basilica of Santa Sabina connected Rome’s Aventine Hill, preceded by prayers successful a adjacent religion and a procession of cardinals and bishops.
