Pope Francis has had an extraordinary first year. He attacked economic injustice, placed mercy at the center of his pastoral approach, and traded the culture war for the culture of encounter with statements such as, “Who am I to judge?” The Catholic Church has been reenergized by the humility of his actions and inspired by his profound words of wisdom and love. He was the most searched person on the Internet in 2013, and has made his way onto the cover of Rolling Stone and other popular periodicals that rarely feature religious figures. And he was rightly named TIME’s Person of the Year.
Yet one of the pope’s key initiatives stands out for its abject failure: his push for a peaceful resolution to Syria’s civil war. On September 7, 2013, he called for a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, which resulted in neither the establishment of a just peace nor even a cessation of the conflict that has raged since Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad began killing peaceful protesters.
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