Two very different recent stories from respected international news sources received less attention than they merit. Both reports have to do with war and religion; separately, they are cause for concern; together, they should cause grave alarm over diminishing prospects for international peace and security.

The first report quotes Pope Francis speculating Saturday that World War III not only is on the brink, but it is already under way. His comments were reported by the Associated Press, Reuters, the British Broadcast Corp. and others.

Speaking at a Mass marking the 100th anniversary of World War I at Italy’s largest military cemetery, 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.”

Francis makes a point. The rise of an Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq; a Russian incursion into Ukraine; ethnic violence in South Sudan, continuing strife in Afghanistan, China’s posturing over Pacific islands claimed by other nations; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — the list of conflicts goes on and on.

“War is madness,” the Pope said at a memorial to 100,000 Italian soldiers buried at Redipuglia cemetery, near Italy’s border with Slovenia.

The second story, in Thursday’s online edition of the Israeli national newspaper the Jerusalem Post, reports on a papal audience at the Vatican with Shimon Peres, former president of Israel. Peres, 91, the world’s oldest head of state when his term ended six weeks ago, was seeking the Pope’s support for his proposal for a kind of United Nations for religions.

“In the past, most of the wars in the world were motivated by the idea of nationhood,” Peres told reporters later. “But today, wars are incited using religion as an excuse.”

The Israeli senior statesman said Francis was the only world figure respected enough to bring an end to the wars raging in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.

The pope heard Peres’ proposal but did not commit to it.

“The pope listened, showing his interest, attention, and encouragement,” said a Vatican spokesman.

There’s wisdom in Francis’ restraint. He has frequently condemned the idea of war in God’s name, but only last month he said the international community would be justified in using force to stop what he called “unjust aggression” by Islamic State militants who have killed or displaced thousands of people in Iraq and Syria.

But a religious leader’s approval of armed resistance to a specific, unjust aggression is not the same thing as assuming the leadership role of global moral peacemaker, as envisioned by Peres.

That’s one step away from the crusades of old, Christian against Muslim in a battle over whose god is superior. Stooping to that mentality would not serve either faith community or the supreme deity they often forget that they worship in common.

The other possible scenario is a united religions organization so diluted by compromise, so as not to offend any member, that the organization represents the interests and beliefs of nobody.

Religion always has served as a moral grounding for culture and government, and it must continue to do so it can influence the causes, the severity and the outcome of wars. It can help set an agenda for moral imperatives and appeal to our sense of mercy and tolerance in the face of war drums and rattling sabers.

But religion must never become government. That’s a central belief on which America was founded. If we follow that path, we become essentially the same thing as the ISIS caliphate: willing to kill in the name of God.

It shouldn’t take a pope or president to understand that shouldn’t be the objective of any religion.