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.