Pope Francis said Wednesday that he was “heartbroken by the massacre” at a Texas elementary school.
During his weekly general audience, the pontiff said he was praying for the murdered children and adults and their families. An 18-year-old gunman opened fire at an elementary school in the majority-Latino town of Uvalde, killing at least 19 children and two adults before he was killed by police.
“It is time to say ‘enough’ to the indiscriminate arms trade,” said Francisco, who called for a new commitment “so that tragedies like this cannot happen again.”
In the United States, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, seconded the pope’s message saying that “the Second Amendment did not come down from Sinai.”
“The right to bear arms will never be more important than human life. Our children have rights too. And our elected officials have a moral duty to protect them,” the cardinal wrote on Twitter.
The pope has been lashing out at the arms industry for years, calling manufacturers “merchants of death.”
With information from the Associated Press
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