During a pilgrimage to the Polish military cemetery, at the foot of the Abbey of Montecassino, completely destroyed by battle 80 years ago - a sign of war's destructive madness -, the President of the Community of Sant'Egidio Marco Impagliazzo said: "Meditating on the sufferings of war in places so scarred by it encourages us to never give in to the logic of conflict. We hear from this place of pain the cry for peace that rises from many peoples suffering from war, from Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and Congo, from Haiti to Syria. We join this cry for peace in all lands. May the memory of what good and peaceful things St Benedict sowed in these places in a dark time for Europe give us the impetus for a new commitment to peace and peaceful coexistence of peoples'.
A large delegation of the Community of Sant'Egidio visited Montecassino. The site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War between January and May 1944,