(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 20 - Pope Francis warned of the threat of nuclear war in an audience on Wednesday with participants in the XII Colloquium between the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue and the 'Centre for Interreligious & Intercultural Dialogue' in Teheran.
    The Argentine pontiff said the world was "divided and rent by hatred, hostility, wars and the threat of a nuclear conflict".
    He appealed to people of all faiths "to pray and work for dialogue, reconciliation, peace, security and the integral development of all humanity." Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Tuesday lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons after the United States said it had authorized Ukraine to use its missiles against military targets inside Russia.
    Later on Wednesday during his weekly general audience, the pope described the war in Ukraine as a "shameful disaster for the whole of humanity" after the 1,000-day mark since the Russian invasion passed on Tuesday.
    He said the scale of the tragedy should not dissuade us from "standing alongside the martyred Ukrainian people" and working for peace, so that "weapons might give way to dialogue and combat to encounter." Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, the wife of President Volodymyr Zelensky, attended the audience. (ANSA).