AFP/Reuters
Washington
The Vatican’s envoy to the United Nations in Geneva has endorsed military action against the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria – an unusual move because the Vatican traditionally has opposed force in the region.
In an interview with the US Catholic website Crux, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said that IS fighters were committing atrocities on a huge scale and the world needed to intervene.
“We have to stop this kind of genocide,” the Italian archbishop told Crux. “Otherwise we’ll be crying out in the future about why we didn’t do something, why we allowed such a terrible tragedy to happen.”
Tomasi said that a co-ordinated and “well-thought-out coalition” was needed to do everything possible to achieve a political settlement without violence.
“But if that’s not possible, then the use of force will be necessary,” he added.
Pope Francis has denounced the “intolerable brutality” being inflicted on Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria by IS group militants.
Last month, IS kidnapped 220 Assyrians in the Tal Tamr area of Syria where the extremist Islamist group has seized control of 10 Christian villages, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
And the Pope expressed his dismay after the group’s Libyan branch released a video showing the beheading of 21 mostly Egyptian Coptic Christians.
Tomasi’s comments were published on the same day a group of countries led by the Holy See, Russia and Lebanon issued a statement calling on the international community to support all ethnic and religious communities in the Middle East.
The Vatican said more than 60 countries including the United States have endorsed the statement, which warns that Christians in particular now “live a serious existential threat”.
Tomasi emphasised in the interview that Christians are not the only minority group the Vatican wants to protect from Islamic State, which has beheaded Arab and western hostages and kidnapped or killed members of different religious minorities.
“Christians, Yazidis, Shias, Sunnis, Alawites, all are human beings whose rights deserve to be protected,” he said. “Christians are a special target at this moment, but we want to help them without excluding anyone.”
Tomasi said any anti-Islamic State coalition should include the Muslim states of the Middle East and be guided by the United Nations.