Pope focussing on peacemaking for next World Day of Peace
(July 16, 2012) "Blessed are the Peacemakers" is the theme that Pope Benedict XVI
has chosen for the 46th World Day of Peace of the Catholic Church which will be marked
on January 1, 2013. The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace released
the theme on Monday saying “the annual message of the Pope, in the complexity of the
present time, will encourage everyone to take responsibility with regard to peace-building.”
The theme for the World Day of Peace is released earlier, but the message is released
only a few weeks ahead of the actual celebration. The Pontifical Council said the
Pope’s annual message will embrace the fullness and diversity of the concept of peace,
starting from the human being: inner peace and outer peace; then, highlighting the
anthropological emergency, the nature and incidence of nihilism; and, at the same
time, fundamental rights, in the first place freedom of conscience, freedom of expression,
freedom of religion. The Message will offer, as well, an ethical reflection on some
measures the world is going to take to contain the financial and economic crisis,
the educational crisis, the crisis of the institutions and politics, which is also
- in many cases - a worrying crisis of democracy. The Message will also look at
the 50th Anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and of the encyclical letter by
Pope John XXIII, ‘Pacem in Terris’, according to which the primacy is always for the
human dignity and its freedom, for the building of an earthly city to the service
of every person, without any discrimination, and directed to the common good which
is based on justice and true peace.