Father Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, on Sunday spoke out on Newsmax in support of the Druze, a minority sect in Syria, after Israel stepped in to help restore order amidst their persecution by Islamists, and he called for an end to violence in the name of religion.
“Not being afraid to use the word Islamic terrorism, this is key to solving a problem,” Pavone said on Newsmax’s “Sunday Agenda.” “We have to be able to name the problem. And first of all, I mean, it’s such an insult to God that people do religious violence in the name of religion.”
When Christians look at the cross, they see a “God who absorbed violence against himself,” but religious persecution is “exactly the opposite” of the “heart of God,” Pavone said.
“I think that a lot of people carry out this kind of violence, first of all, because they’re looking for a religious reason to excuse, you know, intolerable behavior that for one reason or another, they’re inclined to commit,” he added. “But the other dimension of it is that, you know, if you’re trying to advance your religion or defend your religion, or make a point about your religion by killing innocent people, you must not have very much confidence in the truth of your religion.”
And Christians “present the truth, and we let people embrace it freely, not with violence,” Pavone said.
Meanwhile, Albania has now become a Christian majority for the first time in centuries, and Pavone said he thinks that is a trend that will continue across Europe because “Christianity is true.”
“Everyone is free to embrace the religious faith that they believe is the right one, but the truth of Christianity prevails,” Pavone added. “We’ve seen in the history of the church, Lydia, that the more Christianity is persecuted, the more it grows. Persecution is in a sense, the blood of the martyrs. It was said in the early church, it is the seed of Christians. And that’s the paradox of the cross.”
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