Ethan Hawke Shares Idea On How Pope Francis Can End War In Ukraine

Ethan Hawke dropped by “The Late Show” on Tuesday, where he shared his unorthodox idea to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“I had this idea that I wanted to write the pope, and say to him that Francis of Assisi marched across the desert to the battlefield in the fifth crusade to try to have audience with the sultan. And he did this huge act of peace. And he should have been killed, but the sultan didn’t kill him,” said Hawke.

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“Pope Francis should take his namesake, and if he would do it, if he would lead a march from Belarus to Mariupol, and we would all go. And we could bring the refugees to their homes. And, like, priests and rabbis, and we could all go and say you have to stop killing children,” Hawke continued.

 

“The choice shouldn’t be whether to escalate the war, or for democracy to fail,” Hawke said.

“I feel like the grown-ups of the world need to stand up and say, ‘You’re not allowed to bomb and kill children. You’re not allowed to do it. You gotta behave like a grown-up.’ And that way we could focus our energy on taking care of the planet and address the real [crises] that are happening right now, instead of making them up,” he said.

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Pope Francis, Hawke pointed out, has the kind of rare global platform that actually could swing the pendulum.

“The reason why him, I keep thinking about where the voice for non-violence is,” Hawke explained. “Where is Martin Luther King? Where is Mother Teresa? Where is Nelson Mandela? Where are the voices of people to ask us to join together? And I feel like he’s one of the very few people I can think of that has that moral authority.”

“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on Global.