Hearty tribute

Thanks for your beautiful editorial “Pope Francis, voice of sanity and humility,” April 21, Gulf Today website). The Pope’s voice was of humaneness, in an increasingly self-obsessed world. You have rightly extolled his quality of being able to apologise gracefully. Apologising to someone does not make a person small or inferior. The Pope believed in a world of peace. A world, in which the weapons of mass-destruction are not deployed against our fellow-men, but are gradually deactivated and dismantled. We should aim for a world, where we take pride in building, not in destroying. People flock to see the Empire State Building in New York, the Statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro, the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, etc. These gorgeous monuments are a tribute to man’s ingenuity and creativity. We need more such works of art and less drone-killings.

The Pope travelled to various countries, including the Middle East, to build bridges between people and cultures. He believed in a borderless world, where people respect each other, irrespective of whether they are Moslems, Christians, Hindus or Buddhists. We should strive towards this goal, however utopian it seems. A truly borderless world may be possible if the disparities in the world are reduced and every man had a home and a job, especially in Africa and South Asia. If the fruits of technology are widely shared, we could have a more equal world.

Rajendra Aneja,

Mumbai, India