Vatican issues a reminder of what's going on in the rest of the world.
In early April, the Vatican missionary news agency, Fides, published a 22-page dossier to draw attention to the "silent wars" around the globe. The agency complained that, judging by newspaper headlines and running TV coverage, Iraq was the only war worth reporting -- or worth protesting.
"Millions of victims, including women and children, millions of wounded, millions of disabled who will always carry the signs of violence in their flesh do not make news, do not stir the media and do not send people marching in protest," it said.
"They don't even merit a few lines in a newspaper," it said.
The pope has reminded people that as Baghdad, Iraq, burns, the Holy Land is still being devastated by continual violence between Palestinians and Israeli occupation troops.
On April 9, the pope said that while the world's attention was focused on Iraq equally tragic news was coming in from the Great Lakes region in Africa, where a massacre left hundreds of people dead.
In fact, according to an April report by the International Rescue Committee, the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which began in 1998, has cost 3.3 million lives, more than any war since World War II.
