Pope Francis carries flowers as he visits an Austro-Hungarian cemetery in Fogliano di Redipuglia, northern Italy, yesterday. He urged the world to shed its apathy in the face of what he sees as a third world war, intoning “war is madness” at the foot of a Fascist-era monument to soldiers killed in World War I. Photo: Luca Bruno/AP

Pope Francis yesterday urged the world to shed its apathy in the face of what he sees as a third world war, intoning “war is madness” at the foot of a Fascist-era monument to soldiers killed in World War I.

Francis’ aim in recalling those who died in the Great War that broke out 100 years ago was to honour the victims of all wars, and it came at a time when his calls for peace have grown ever more urgent amid new threats in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Standing at an altar beneath the sloping Redipuglia memorial entombing 100,000 Italian soldiers fallen in World War I, the Pope said “even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction”.

The visit was also infused with intensely personal meaning. The Pope’s grandfather fought in Italy’s 1915-1917 offensive against the Austro-Hungarian empire, in the battlefields recalled by the Redipuglia memorial, surviving to impress upon the future pope the horror of war.

An Italian Defence Ministry official presented the Pope with his grandfather’s military record during the commemorations, and the parents of an Italian soldier killed in Afghanistan last year presented Francis with the distinctive feathered Bersagliere cap worn by the Piedmontese corps, famed for a rugged endurance epitomised by their tradition of marching at a jog.

Francis’ grandfather, who hailed from the Piedmont region, belonged to the corps, said Redipuglia parish priest Fr Duilio Nardin.

The human toll of ‘senseless massacres’ and ‘mindless wars’ has been met with apathy. Humanity needs to weep, and this is the time to weep

The military records showed that the Pope’s grandfather, Giovanni Carlo Bergoglio, was a radio operator during the Isonzo campaign aimed at piercing the Austro-Hungarian defences. The 12 battles are commemorated at the Redipuglia monument which was dedicated by Italy’s Fascist government in 1938 on the eve of World War II.

The elder Bergoglio, who was drafted aged 30 as Italy entered the war, obtained a certificate of good conduct and 200 lire at the war’s end, according to documents discovered by the Italian bishops’ conference’s media outlets. With postwar Italy’s economy stalled, he emigrated to Argentina where the future pontiff – Jorge Mario Bergoglio – was born.

The Pope in the past has recalled the “many painful stories from the lips of my grandfather”.

Before arriving at the grandiose monument, the Pope prayed privately among the neat rows of gravestones for fallen soldiers from five nations buried in a tidy Austro-Hungarian cemetery just a couple of hundred of metres away.

In his homily during an open-air Mass at the Italian monument, the Pope remembered the victims of every war - up to today.

“Today, too, the victims are many”, fallen to behind-the-scenes “interests, geopolitical strategies, lust for money and power”, the Pope said.

He lamented that the human toll of “senseless massacres” and “mindless wars” has been met with apathy. Francis urged: “Humanity needs to weep, and this is the time to weep.”