From 22nd to 24th September the Community of Sant’Egidio met in Paris to pray for peace. An annual appointment, the first Prayer for Peace was organised by Jean Paul II in 1986 in Assisi (Italy). Since then, the Community has accepted the challenge of bringing together religious and lay leaders from around the world to showcase the importance of religions in promoting dialogue, friendship and peace. This is the Spirit of Assisi. This is the spirit we would like to bring back from Paris into our Community in London. Because, despite the widespread difficulties, hatred and conflicts, it is still possible to imagine peace together.
Let's not surrender to the logic of war
This year in Paris, capital of universal values such as liberty, equality and fraternity, we were exhorted to imagine how peace could be possible today. In a world ravaged by wars, from Ukraine to the Holy Land, from the Sahel to the Great Lakes Region, this seemed like a quite arduous task. The UN estimates that there are roughly 56 ongoing conflicts globally. As French President Emmanuel Macron reminded us during the opening ceremony, “war seems to be on the prowl again, calling into question the moral and political heritage from the 20th century”. Searching for peace is a real struggle, while war seems to have become a normality. “Peace is something much more precarious and apparently less justified than war”, the President notices. Imagining peace may be challenging but has never been more important.
“You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one” used to sing John Lennon. In Paris, we were surely dreamers, but imagination and creativity are key tools to face current crises. Innovative solutions are needed to build a more just and equal world. If we want to stop war, we have the weapons of dialogue, solidarity, and mutual understanding on our side. For those who believe, prayer is another powerful instrument for peace: “peace is the foundation of many great religious traditions. The very name of God is peace” emphasises Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio. This does not mean that religions have the monopoly of peace, nor that religions have always been peaceful. However, spirituality can help us to look at the fighting sides in a conflict with compassion, while increasing our peace-making tool-kit.
Universal fraternity in our common home
Peace should not be seen as the mere lack of war. In an increasingly interconnected world, peace has taken on a new meaning of solidarity and justice in the face of complex challenges. As underlined by Andrea Riccardi, the choice of meeting in Paris for this year’s Prayer for Peace was not a hazard. Paris recently hosted the Olympics and Paralympics Games, which sent a clear message to the world: “Sport and competition need confrontation and interdependence”. The closing ceremony of Sant’Egidio’s International Meeting for Peace symbolically took place in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, which recently witnessed an unprecedented gesture of global solidarity. In 2019, after having been heavily damaged by a fire, people from all over the world, believers and not, pledged to help with its reconstruction, an example of how humanity can unite in front of adversity.
But there are many more cases in which more solidarity would be needed. Think about the fight against climate change, growing social and economic inequalities and the rise of new technologies. National and personal egoisms seem to prevail, thus fuelling conflicts over resources, perpetuating injustices and uneven distribution of wealth. Never the world has been so rich and never so unequal. Poverty remains a real challenge while people’s lives are worth less and less. Various discussions in Paris focused on the need of a new global governance based on a common vision and a human awareness of sharing the same planet.
May peace be with you
As members of the Community of Sant’Egidio we are called to bring the Spirit of Assisi within our communities. This is an important mission for us, especially in London, where the Community is actively bringing support and friendships to fragile and lonely people, including the homeless, elderly and migrants. As Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, kindly remarked “To the members of Sant'Egidio, thank you. You are the bearers of hope. [You] continue to work in many other places, faithfully despite repeated discouragement. [You] centre [your] efforts in repeated prayer, in prayer which draws many who are without faith to find the love of God in Jesus Christ”. Our work as peacemakers start in our houses, in our streets and in our cities. We should not remain silent in front of injustices, but use our capacity to pray, to build peace and to work with the poor as a cry of protest and a sign of resistance.
From the Cathedral of Notre Dame, an Appeal for Peace was launched from women and men of different religions gathered in Paris with the Community of Sant’Egidio: “While aware of the complexity of political entanglements, we call today for a profound turnaround. We call on policymakers, warlords, all peoples. The step for change which is required is to seek for pathways of peace that already exist, also when they are hidden by the darkness of war. In front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame - destroyed by fire and today rebuilt - we affirm with conviction: we can free the world from the fire of war and rebuild it more peaceful and just!”