World Day of Peace : "Fraternity, the foundation and pathway to peace”

31 July 2013: "Fraternity, the foundation and pathway to peace" is the theme chosen by Pope Francis for the 47th World Day of Peace, the Vatican announced on Wednesday. The World Day of Peace was initiated in 1968 by Pope Paul VI, and it is celebrated on the first day of each year.
The Pope chose this particular theme on fraternity as from the beginning of his Petrine Ministry, he has stressed the need to combat the “throwaway culture” and to promote instead a "culture of encounter", in order to build a more just and peaceful world. Fraternity is a dowry that every man and every woman brings with himself or herself as a human being, as a child of the one Father. In the face of the many tragedies that afflict the family of nations - poverty, hunger, underdevelopment, conflicts, migrations, pollution, inequalities, injustice, organized crime, fundamentalisms - fraternity is the foundation and the pathway to peace. Fraternity, a gift and task that comes from God the Father, urges us to be in solidarity against inequality and poverty that undermine the social fabric, to take care of every person, especially the weakest and most defenceless. In a world that is constantly growing more interdependent, the good of fraternity is one that we cannot do without. It serves to defeat the spread of the globalization of indifference to which Pope Francis has frequently referred. The globalization of indifference must give way to a globalization of fraternity. Fraternity should leave its mark on every aspect of life, including the economy, finance, civil society, politics, research, development, public and cultural institutions.
At the start of his ministry, Pope Francis issues a message in continuity with that of his predecessors, which proposes to everyone the pathway of fraternity, in order to give the world a more human face.