Message of Pope Benedict XVI for the
celebration of the World Day of Peace
on 1 January 2013 Blessed are the peacemakers The following is the English text of
ther Holy Father's message for the
World Day of Peace that will be
celebrated on 1 January 2013. The
Message was dated 8 December
[2012]. 1. EACH NEW YEAR brings the
expectation of a better world. In light
of this, I ask God, the Father of
humanity, to grant us concord and
peace, so that the aspirations of all for
a happy and prosperous life may be achieved. Fifty years after the beginning of the
Second Vatican Council, which helped
to strengthen the Church's mission in
the world, it is heartening to realize
that Christians, as the People of God in
fellowship with him and sojourning among mankind, are committed within
history to sharing humanity's joys and hopes, grief and anguish, 1 as they proclaim the salvation of Christ and
promote peace for all. In effect, our times, marked by
globalization with its positive and
negative aspects, as well as the
continuation of violent conflicts and
threats of war, demand a new, shared
commitment in pursuit of the common good and the development of all men,
and of the whole man. It is alarming to see hotbeds of tension
and conflict caused by growing
instances of inequality between rich
and poor, by the prevalence of a
selfish and individualistic mindset
which also finds expression in an unregulated financial capitalism. In
addition to the varied forms of
terrorism and international crime,
peace is also endangered by those
forms of fundamentalism and
fanaticism which distort the true nature of religion, which is called to
foster fellowship and reconciliation
among people. All the same, the many different efforts
at peacemaking which abound in our
world testify to mankind's innate
vocation to peace. In every person the
desire for peace is an essential
aspiration which coincides in a certain way with the desire for a full, happy
and successful human life. In other
words, the desire for peace
corresponds to a fundamental moral
principle, namely, the duty and right to
an integral social and communitarian development, which is part of God's
plan for mankind. Man is made for the
peace which is God's gift. All of this led me to draw inspiration
for this Message from the words of
Jesus Christ: "Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they will be called
children of God" (Mt 5:9). Gospel beatitude 2. The beatitudes which Jesus
proclaimed (cf. Mt 5:3-12 and Lk
6:20-23) are promises. In the biblical
tradition, the beatitude is a literary
genre which always involves some
good news, a "gospel", which culminates in a promise. Therefore, the
beatitudes are not only moral
exhortations whose observance
foresees in due time - ordinarily in
the next life - a reward or a situation
of future happiness. Rather, the blessedness of which the beatitudes
speak consists in the fulfilment of a
promise made to all those who allow
themselves to be guided by the
requirements of truth, justice and love.
In the eyes of the world, those who trust in God and his promises often
appear naïve or far from reality. Yet
Jesus tells them that not only in the
next life, but already in this life, they
will discover that they are children of
God, and that God has always been, and ever will be, completely on their
side. They will understand that they
are not alone, because he is on the
side of those committed to truth,
justice and love. Jesus, the revelation
of the Father's love, does not hesitate to offer himself in self-sacrifice. Once
we accept Jesus Christ, God and man,
we have the joyful experience of an
immense gift: the sharing of God's
own life, the life of grace, the pledge of
a fully blessed existence. Jesus Christ, in particular, grants us true peace,
which is born of the trusting
encounter of man with God. Jesus' beatitude tells us that peace is
both a messianic gift and the fruit of
human effort. In effect, peace
presupposes a humanism open to
transcendence. It is the fruit of the
reciprocal gift, of a mutual enrichment, thanks to the gift which has its source
in God and enables us to live with
others and for others. The ethics of
peace is an ethics of fellowship and
sharing. It is indispensable, then, that
the various cultures in our day overcome forms of anthropology and
ethics based on technical and practical
suppositions which are merely
subjectivistic and pragmatic, in virtue
of which relationships of coexistence
are inspired by criteria of power or profit, means become ends and vice
versa, and culture and education are
centred on instruments, technique and
efficiency alone. The precondition for
peace is the dismantling of the
dictatorship of relativism and of the supposition of a completely
autonomous morality which precludes
acknowledgment of the ineluctable
natural moral law inscribed by God
upon the conscience of every man and
woman. Peace is the building up of coexistence in rational and moral
terms, based on a foundation whose
measure is not created by man, but
rather by God. As Psalm 29 puts it:
"May the Lord give strength to his
people; may the Lord bless his people with peace" (v. 11). Peace: God's gift and the fruit of
human effort 3. Peace concerns the human person
as a whole, and it involves complete
commitment. It is peace with God
through a life lived according to his
will. It is interior peace with oneself,
and exterior peace with our neighbours and all creation. Above all,
as Blessed John XXIII wrote in his
Encyclical Pacem in Terris, whose
fiftieth anniversary will fall in a few
months, it entails the building up of a
coexistence based on truth, freedom, love and justice.2 The denial of what makes up the true nature of human
beings in its essential dimensions, its
intrinsic capacity to know the true and
the good and, ultimately, to know God
himself, jeopardizes peacemaking.
Without the truth about man inscribed by the Creator in the human heart,
freedom and love become debased,
and justice loses the ground of its
exercise. To become authentic peacemakers, it
is fundamental to keep in mind our
transcendent dimension and to enter
into constant dialogue with God, the
Father of mercy, whereby we implore
the redemption achieved for us by his only-begotten Son. In this way
mankind can overcome that
progressive dimming and rejection of
peace which is sin in all its forms:
selfishness and violence, greed and
the will to power and dominion, intolerance, hatred and unjust
structures. The attainment of peace depends
above all on recognizing that we are,
in God, one human family. This family
is structured, as the Encyclical Pacem in
Terris taught, by interpersonal
relations and institutions supported and animated by a communitarian
"we", which entails an internal and
external moral order in which, in
accordance with truth and justice,
reciprocal rights and mutual duties are
sincerely recognized. Peace is an order enlivened and integrated by love, in
such a way that we feel the needs of
others as our own, share our goods
with others and work throughout the
world for greater communion in
spiritual values. It is an order achieved in freedom, that is, in a way consistent
with the dignity of persons who, by
their very nature as rational beings,
take responsibility for their own actions.3 Peace is not a dream or something
utopian; it is possible. Our gaze needs
to go deeper, beneath superficial
appearances and phenomena, to
discern a positive reality which exists
in human hearts, since every man and woman has been created in the image
of God and is called to grow and
contribute to the building of a new
world. God himself, through the
incarnation of his Son and his work of
redemption, has entered into history and has brought about a new creation
and a new covenant between God and
man (cf. Jer 31:31-34), thus enabling
us to have a "new heart" and a "new
spirit" (cf. Ez 36:26). For this very reason the Church is
convinced of the urgency of a new
proclamation of Jesus Christ, the first
and fundamental factor of the integral
development of peoples and also of
peace. Jesus is indeed our peace, our justice and our reconciliation (cf. Eph
2:14; 2 Cor 5:18). The peacemaker,
according to Jesus' beatitude, is the
one who seeks the good of the other,
the fullness of good in body and soul,
today and tomorrow. From this teaching one can infer that
each person and every community,
whether religious, civil, educational or
cultural, is called to work for peace.
Peace is principally the attainment of
the common good in society at its different levels, primary and
intermediary, national, international
and global. Precisely for this reason it
can be said that the paths which lead
to the attainment of the common good
are also the paths that must be followed in the pursuit of peace. Peacemakers are those who love,
defend and promote life in its fullness 4. The path to the attainment of the
common good and to peace is above
all that of respect for human life in all
its many aspects, beginning with its
conception, through its development
and up to its natural end. True peacemakers, then, are those who
love, defend and promote human life
in all its dimensions, personal,
communitarian and transcendent. Life
in its fullness is the height of peace.
Anyone who loves peace cannot tolerate attacks and crimes against life. Those who insufficiently value human
life and, in consequence, support
among other things the liberalization
of abortion, perhaps do not realize
that in this way they are proposing the
pursuit of a false peace. The flight from responsibility, which degrades human
persons, and even more so the killing
of a defenceless and innocent being,
will never be able to produce
happiness or peace. Indeed how
could one claim to bring about peace, the integral development of peoples
or even the protection of the
environment without defending the
life of those who are weakest,
beginning with the unborn. Every
offence against life, especially at its beginning, inevitably causes
irreparable damage to development,
peace and the environment. Neither is
it just to introduce surreptitiously into
legislation false rights or freedoms
which, on the basis of a reductive and relativistic view of human beings and
the clever use of ambiguous
expressions aimed at promoting a
supposed right to abortion and
euthanasia, pose a threat to the
fundamental right to life. There is also a need to acknowledge
and promote the natural structure of
marriage as the union of a man and a
woman in the face of attempts to make
it juridically equivalent to radically
different types of union; such attempts actually harm and help to destabilize
marriage, obscuring its specific nature
and its indispensable role in society. These principles are not truths of faith,
nor are they simply a corollary of the
right to religious freedom. They are
inscribed in human nature itself,
accessible to reason and thus common
to all humanity. The Church's efforts to promote them are not therefore
confessional in character, but
addressed to all people, whatever
their religious affiliation. Efforts of this
kind are all the more necessary the
more these principles are denied or misunderstood, since this constitutes
an offence against the truth of the
human person, with serious harm to
justice and peace. Consequently, another important way
of helping to build peace is for legal
systems and the administration of
justice to recognize the right to invoke
the principle of conscientious
objection in the face of laws or government measures that offend
against human dignity, such as
abortion and euthanasia. One of the fundamental human rights,
also with reference to international
peace, is the right of individuals and
communities to religious freedom. At
this stage in history, it is becoming
increasingly important to promote this right not only from the negative point
of view, as freedom from - for
example, obligations or limitations
involving the freedom to choose one's
religion - but also from the positive
point of view, in its various expressions, as freedom for - for
example, bearing witness to one's
religion, making its teachings known,
engaging in activities in the
educational, benevolent and
charitable fields which permit the practice of religious precepts, and
existing and acting as social bodies
structured in accordance with the
proper doctrinal principles and
institutional ends of each. Sadly, even
in countries of long-standing Christian tradition, instances of religious
intolerance are becoming more
numerous, especially in relation to
Christianity and those who simply
wear identifying signs of their religion. Peacemakers must also bear in mind
that, in growing sectors of public
opinion, the ideologies of radical
liberalism and technocracy are
spreading the conviction that
economic growth should be pursued even to the detriment of the state's
social responsibilities and civil society's
networks of solidarity, together with
social rights and duties. It should be
remembered that these rights and
duties are fundamental for the full realization of other rights and duties,
starting with those which are civil and
political. One of the social rights and duties
most under threat today is the right to
work. The reason for this is that labour
and the rightful recognition of
workers' juridical status are
increasingly undervalued, since economic development is thought to
depend principally on completely free
markets. Labour is thus regarded as a
variable dependent on economic and
financial mechanisms. In this regard, I
would reaffirm that human dignity and economic, social and political factors,
demand that we continue "to prioritize
the goal of access to steady employment for everyone."4 If this ambitious goal is to be realized, one
prior condition is a fresh outlook on
work, based on ethical principles and
spiritual values that reinforce the
notion of work as a fundamental good
for the individual, for the family and for society. Corresponding to this
good are a duty and a right that
demand courageous new policies of
universal employment. Building the good of peace through a
new model of development and
economics 5. In many quarters it is now
recognized that a new model of
development is needed, as well as a
new approach to the economy. Both
integral, sustainable development in
solidarity and the common good require a correct scale of goods and
values which can be structured with
God as the ultimate point of reference.
It is not enough to have many
different means and choices at one's
disposal, however good these may be. Both the wide variety of goods
fostering development and the
presence of a wide range of choices
must be employed against the horizon
of a good life, an upright conduct that
acknowledges the primacy of the spiritual and the call to work for the
common good. Otherwise they lose
their real value, and end up becoming
new idols. In order to emerge from the present
financial and economic crisis - which
has engendered ever greater
inequalities - we need people,
groups and institutions which will
promote life by fostering human creativity, in order to draw from the
crisis itself an opportunity for
discernment and for a new economic
model. The predominant model of
recent decades called for seeking
maximum profit and consumption, on the basis of an individualistic and
selfish mindset, aimed at considering
individuals solely in terms of their
ability to meet the demands of
competitiveness. Yet, from another
standpoint, true and lasting success is attained through the gift of ourselves,
our intellectual abilities and our
entrepreneurial skills, since a
"liveable" or truly human economic
development requires the principle of
gratuitousness as an expression of fraternity and the logic of gift.5 Concretely, in economic activity,
peacemakers are those who establish
bonds of fairness and reciprocity with
their colleagues, workers, clients and
consumers. They engage in economic
activity for the sake of the common good and they experience this
commitment as something
transcending their self-interest, for the
benefit of present and future
generations. Thus they work not only
for themselves, but also to ensure for others a future and a dignified
employment. In the economic sector, states in
particular need to articulate policies of
industrial and agricultural
development concerned with social
progress and the growth everywhere
of constitutional and democratic states. The creation of ethical
structures for currency, financial and
commercial markets is also
fundamental and indispensable; these
must be stabilized and better
coordinated and controlled so as not to prove harmful to the very poor.
With greater resolve than has hitherto
been the case, the concern of
peacemakers must also focus upon
the food crisis, which is graver than
the financial crisis. The issue of food security is once more central to the
international political agenda, as a
result of interrelated crises, including
sudden shifts in the price of basic
foodstuffs, irresponsible behaviour by
some economic actors and insufficient control on the part of governments
and the international community. To
face this crisis, peacemakers are called
to work together in a spirit of
solidarity, from the local to the
international level, with the aim of enabling farmers, especially in small
rural holdings, to carry out their
activity in a dignified and sustainable
way from the social, environmental
and economic points of view. Education for a culture of peace: the
role of the family and institutions 6. I wish to reaffirm forcefully that the
various peacemakers are called to
cultivate a passion for the common
good of the family and for social
justice, and a commitment to effective
social education. No one should ignore or
underestimate the decisive role of the
family, which is the basic cell of society
from the demographic, ethical,
pedagogical, economic and political
standpoints. The family has a natural vocation to promote life: it
accompanies individuals as they
mature and it encourages mutual
growth and enrichment through
caring and sharing. The Christian
family in particular serves as a seedbed for personal maturation
according to the standards of divine
love. The family is one of the
indispensable social subjects for the
achievement of a culture of peace. The
rights of parents and their primary role in the education of their children in the
area of morality and religion must be
safeguarded. It is in the family that
peacemakers, tomorrow's promoters
of a culture of life and love, are born and nurtured.6 Religious communities are involved in
a special way in this immense task of
education for peace. The Church
believes that she shares in this great
responsibility as part of the new
evangelization, which is centred on conversion to the truth and love of
Christ and, consequently, the spiritual
and moral rebirth of individuals and
societies. Encountering Jesus Christ
shapes peacemakers, committing
them to fellowship and to overcoming injustice. Cultural institutions, schools and
universities have a special mission of
peace. They are called to make a
notable contribution not only to the
formation of new generations of
leaders, but also to the renewal of public institutions, both national and
international. They can also contribute
to a scientific reflection which will
ground economic and financial
activities on a solid anthropological
and ethical basis. Today's world, especially the world of politics, needs
to be sustained by fresh thinking and
a new cultural synthesis so as to
overcome purely technical approaches
and to harmonize the various political
currents with a view to the common good. The latter, seen as an ensemble
of positive interpersonal and
institutional relationships at the service
of the integral growth of individuals
and groups, is at the basis of all true
education for peace. A pedagogy for peacemakers 7. In the end, we see clearly the need
to propose and promote a pedagogy
of peace. This calls for a rich interior
life, clear and valid moral points of
reference, and appropriate attitudes
and lifestyles. Acts of peacemaking converge for the achievement of the
common good; they create interest in
peace and cultivate peace. Thoughts,
words and gestures of peace create a
mentality and a culture of peace, and a
respectful, honest and cordial atmosphere. There is a need, then, to
teach people to love one another, to
cultivate peace and to live with good
will rather than mere tolerance. A
fundamental encouragement to this is
"to say no to revenge, to recognize injustices, to accept apologies without
looking for them, and finally, to forgive",7 in such a way that mistakes and offences can be acknowledged in
truth, so as to move forward together
towards reconciliation. This requires
the growth of a pedagogy of pardon.
Evil is in fact overcome by good, and
justice is to be sought in imitating God the Father who loves all his children
(cf. Mt 5:21-48). This is a slow process,
for it presupposes a 2spiritual
evolution, an education in lofty values,
a new vision of human history. There
is a need to renounce that false peace promised by the idols of this world
along with the dangers which
accompany it, that false peace which
dulls consciences, which leads to self-
absorption, to a withered existence
lived in indifference. The pedagogy of peace, on the other hand, implies
activity, compassion, solidarity,
courage and perseverance. Jesus embodied all these attitudes in
his own life, even to the complete gift
of himself, even to "losing his life" (cf.
Mt 10:39; Lk 17:33; Jn 12:25). He
promises his disciples that sooner or
later they will make the extraordinary discovery to which I originally alluded,
namely that God is in the world, the
God of Jesus, fully on the side of man.
Here I would recall the prayer asking
God to make us instruments of his
peace, to be able to bring his love wherever there is hatred, his mercy
wherever there is hurt, and true faith
wherever there is doubt. For our part,
let us join Blessed John XXIII in asking
God to enlighten all leaders so that,
besides caring for the proper material welfare of their peoples, they may
secure for them the precious gift of
peace, break down the walls which
divide them, strengthen the bonds of
mutual love, grow in understanding,
and pardon those who have done them wrong; in this way, by his power
and inspiration all the peoples of the
earth will experience fraternity, and
the peace for which they long will ever flourish and reign among them.8 With this prayer I express my hope
that all will be true peacemakers, so
that the city of man may grow in
fraternal harmony, prosperity and
peace. From the Vatican, 8 December 2012
