Pope: notion of forgiveness needs to find its way into international discourse on conflict resolution
Vatican City (AsiaNews) - The notion of forgiveness needs to find
its way into international discourse on conflict resolution. This
is required today, for the goal of world peace, the same as 50 years ago when
it prompted John XXIII to write Pacem in
Terris (in the picture: the time of signature). Benedict
XVI writes in his message to the president of the Pontifical Academy of Social
Sciences, Mary Ann Glendon, and participants at the 18th plenary session of the
Academy on the theme: "The Quest for
Global Ordinis Tranquillitatis. Pacem in Terris, Fifty Years Later."
The
encyclical of 1963 is a lesson for today's world: it turned the heart of
humanity to remember the value of peace in a time when nuclear war seemed a real
possibility. "Since 1963, some of the conflicts
that seemed insoluble at the time have passed into history", which should strengthen the "struggle for peace and justice in
the world today, confident that our common pursuit of the divinely established
order, of a world where the dignity of every human person is accorded the
respect that is due, can and will bear fruit. "
"The
vision offered by Pope John - writes Benedict XVI - still has much to teach us as we struggle to
face the new challenges for peace and justice in the post-Cold-War era, amid
the continuing proliferation of armaments."
Pacem
in Terris "was and is a powerful summons to engage in that creative dialogue between the Church
and the world, between believers and non-believers," in the spirit of Vatican II and Pope John
XXIII.
" In that same spirit, after the terrorist
attacks that shook the world in September 2001, Blessed John Paul II insisted
that there can be "no peace without justice, no justice without
forgiveness" (Message for the 2002 World Day of Peace). The
notion of forgiveness needs to find its way into international discourse on
conflict resolution, so as to transform the sterile language of mutual
recrimination which leads nowhere. If the human creature is made in the image
of God, a God of justice who is "rich in mercy" (Eph 2:4),
then these qualities need to be reflected in the conduct of human affairs. It
is the combination of justice and forgiveness, of justice and grace, which lies
at the heart of the divine response to human wrong-doing (cf. Spe Salvi,
44), at the heart, in other words, of the "divinely established
order" (Pacem in Terris, 1). Forgiveness is not a denial of
wrong-doing, but a participation in the healing and transforming love of God
which reconciles and restores."
Even
the recent Synod on the Churches of Africa and the Middle East, Benedict XVI
concluded, showed that "historic wrongs and injustices can only be overcome if men and women are
inspired by a message of healing and hope, a message that offers a way forward,
out of the impasse that so often locks people and nations into a vicious circle
of violence. "
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14/03/2024 14:06
