The Young Pope (sermon):
They say once, long ago, the Church tried to ban a weapon.
Not a sword. Not a spear.
A crossbow.
In the year 1139, at the Second Lateran Council, the Church declared it hateful to God that Christians should slaughter one another with such a machine.
A weapon too efficient.
Too easy.
A peasant could kill a knight.
So the Church spoke—and the world ignored it.
Because war does not listen to morality.
War listens to advantage.
And now… we stand in a new century with new crossbows.
Depleted uranium.
Weapons that poison the earth long after the battle is over.
Weapons that do not just kill the enemy—but curse the children.
We have learned nothing.
Even today, the Church speaks again—against nuclear weapons, against the machinery of annihilation—calling for their abolition, calling their very possession immoral.
And still, the world smiles politely…
and reloads.
Do you see the pattern?
A thousand years ago:
“Do not use the crossbow.”
Today:
“Do not irradiate the earth.”
And in both ages, men answer the same way:
We will do what we must to win.
If I had children…
if I had been a father at the dawn of this millennium…
They would now be of fighting age.
Perfect soldiers.
Old enough to carry rifles…
young enough not to question orders.
And where would we send them?
Not to fields of wheat.
Not to cities of light.
But to another wasteland—
another desert soaked not only in blood,
but in something far worse:
memory written into the soil itself.
This is the true scandal.
Not that weapons exist—
but that every generation believes it is the last one that must use them.
And every generation is wrong.