Working for Peace

We live in a time when tensions, conflicts, and hate speech seem to be multiplying: on social media, at work, in politics, even within families. Globally, armed conflicts are reaching levels not seen for decades. All of this reminds us that peace is never guaranteed, but rather needs to be built every single day.

Given this reality, Chiara Lubich's words from 2004 are still relevant today:

«Every people and every person has a deep yearning for peace, harmony, and unity. But despite our efforts and goodwill, after millennia of history, we find ourselves unable to maintain a stable and lasting peace. (…) because peace is not merely the absence of war, struggles, divisions, and trauma». True peace "It is fullness of life and joy, it is integral salvation of the person, it is freedom, it is justice and fraternity in love among all peoples».

Working for peace requires taking action, taking the initiative, sometimes with creativity.

Each of us can also be a "peace artisan": in the small things of everyday life and also in the big things, by joining global initiatives that promote harmony and collaboration.

The project Living Peace[1]where the personal desire to do something for peace has become a peace education program. Currently, more than 2,600 schools and groups are part of this project, and more than two million children, young people, and adults from five continents participate in its initiatives. Among these is the "peace die," whose faces are written with phrases that help build peaceful relationships, which everyone tries to put into practice.

Recently in a webinar entitled “PForgiveness and peace: the courage of difficult decisions”[2]The importance of forgiveness and reconciliation was highlighted in order to be architects of peace by rebuilding what had been broken.

Finally, another example is that of Rondine Method[3]An open-air laboratory for escaping the logic of the enemy. Israelis and Palestinians, Serbs and Bosnians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, but also Malians, Nigerians and Colombians, and more recently Russians and Ukrainians, have forged a viable path to repair relationships destroyed by hatred and build strong bonds in favor of peace. Among all the young people who have come to the Citadel of Peace, a small medieval village on the outskirts of Arezzo, over these thirty years, we now find politicians, ambassadors, business leaders, and young leaders who dedicate their lives to healing the wounds of these painful conflicts, laying the foundations for a future that intertwines peaceful relations and development. To live this ideal, let us resolve to sow peace wherever we are, because every step toward peace makes us more fully human and brings all of society closer to a horizon of justice and fraternity.