From the Website of Vatican
links https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-05/pope-leo-xiv-if-you-want-peace-prepare-institutions-of-peace.html
Pope Leo XIV: If you want peace, prepare institutions of peace
Speaking
with participants in last year’s Arena of Peace, Pope Leo says the
Gospel and the Church’s social doctrine are a constant source of support
for Christians, and a compass for everyone in efforts to build peace.
Pope Leo on Friday received more than 300 representatives of associations and movements that took part in the 2024 “Arena of Peace” in the Italian city of Verona.
The encounter, which took place in the Vatican, marked a “return visit,” repaying Pope Francis' participation in last year’s event, and aimed to relaunch the traditional Verona gatherings as a forum for discussions and proposals concerning the Church’s social doctrine.
Standing with victims
In
his remarks to the group, Pope Leo XIV echoed Pope Francis, who said
that “building peace starts by standing alongside victims and seeing
things from their point of view.” “This approach is essential,” he said,
“for disarming hearts, approaches, and mentalities, and for denouncing
the injustices of a system that kills and is based on the throwaway
culture.”
The pope highlighted the “courageous embrace” of an
Israeli and a Palestinian, each of whom had had family members killed
during the conflict in Gaza. “They are now friends and work with one
another,” the Pope said, adding that their gesture “remains as a
testimony and sign of hope.”
Pope Leo explained that “the path
to peace requires hearts and minds trained and formed to be attentive to
the other, and capable of recognizing the common good in today’s
context.”
In this regard, he said that the commitment of those
taking part in the Arena of Peace events “is particularly precious”
because their concrete projects and actions “generate hope.”
Educating young people in peacebuilding
Lamenting
the violence in our world and in our societies, Pope Leo said that
young people need “to be able to experience the culture of life,
dialogue, and mutual respect,” especially through good examples. Those
who “resist the temptation to seek revenge” after having suffered
injustice and violence “become the most credible agents of nonviolent
peace-building processes.”
Nonviolence, he said, “as a method and a style, must distinguish our decisions, our relationships, and our actions.”
The
Holy Father said the Gospel and the Church’s social doctrine are “a
constant source of support for Christians in this effort,” as well as a
“compass for everyone” since peacebuilding is “a task entrusted to all.”
Preparing institutions of peace
Concluding his remarks,
Pope Leo said, “If you want peace, prepare institutions of peace” – not
just political institutions, but educational, economic, and social ones
as well. “For this reason,” he said, “I encourage you to remain
committed and present: present within history as a leaven of unity,
communion, and fraternity,” adding that “fraternity must be recovered,
loved, experienced, proclaimed and witnessed, in the confident hope that
it is indeed possible, thanks to the love of God ‘poured into our
hearts through the Holy Spirit.’”
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