Pope: Aim to counter fundamentalist violence with schooling

Pope Francis is urging fellow religious leaders and others to counter breeding grounds for fundamentalist violence by promoting opportunities for schooling and for combating poverty

VATICAN CITY -- Unchecked poverty and ignorance help fundamentalist violence to take hold easily, Pope Francis said as he urged fellow religious leaders and others to counter the phenomenon by promoting schooling. Francis made the call in a message to a four-day meeting that began on Saturday evening in Bologna, Italy, with the gathering aiming to foster understanding among religions. “We must help each other to free the horizon of the sacred from the dark clouds of violence and fundamentalism," Francis said in a message which the Vatican said the pope wrote on Sept. 7. The pope decried that about 5,000 people have been killed in places of worship throughout the world in the last 40 years. Francis called that an outbreak of violence “that exploits the sacred.”