Pope Francis has voiced concern about growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula amid conflicts between North Korea and the United States.

The Associated Press reported the pope said that the North Korean missile crisis has been going on for over a year, and the situation has become too hot on the Korean peninsula, speaking aboard his plane as he returned to Rome from a trip to Egypt on Saturday.

The pontiff said that a wider war will destroy a large part of humanity and its culture – something that humanity could not bear.

Francis called for negotiations and diplomatic solutions to the North Korean crisis, suggesting that smaller nations could play a role in solving the crisis.

He said that there are so many facilitators and mediators who offer themselves, such as Norway, which was influential in organizing the Oslo Accords and resulted in an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in the early 1990s.

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