World Day of Peace: "Fraternity, the foundation and pathway to peace"
Pope Francis on Wednesday announced the theme for the celebration of the 47th World
Day of Peace.
The theme chosen for this occurence, celebrated every year on
January 1, is : "Fraternity, the foundation and pathway to peace". It's the first
World Day of Peace to be celebrated during the pontificate of Pope Francis.
The
World Day of Peace was an initiative of Pope Paul VI and it is celebrated on the first
day of each year. The Message for the World Day of Peace is sent to particular churches
and chancelleries all around the world, drawing attention to the essential value of
peace and the need to work tirelessly in order to attain it.
As the theme of
his first Message for the World Day of Peace, Pope Francis has chosen Fraternity.
Since the beginning of his Petrine Ministry, the Pope 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.
The culture of personal well-being leads to a loss of the
sense of responsibility and fraternal relationship. Others, rather than being “like
us”, appear more as antagonists or enemies and are often treated as objects. Not
uncommonly, the poor and needy are regarded as a "burden", a hindrance to development.
At most, they are considered as recipients of aid or compassionate assistance. They
are not seen as brothers and sisters, called to share the gifts of creation, the goods
of progress and culture, to be partakers at the same table of the fullness of life,
to be protagonists of integral and inclusive development.
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, to love him or her as oneself, with the very heart
of Jesus Christ.
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.