Editorial

We are called to be stewards of peace

In his 2025 World Day of Peace message, Pope Francis reissued his urgent cry for peace. All popes in the past two centuries have called for world peace, and they have identified forgiveness and reconciliation as essential requirements for peace among diverse nations and peoples.

As Pope Francis says:

“God does not weigh up the evils we commit; rather, he is immensely ‘rich in mercy, for the great love with which he loved us’ [Eph 2:4]. Yet he also hears the plea of the poor and the cry of the Earth. We would do well simply to stop for a moment, at the beginning of this year, to think of the mercy with which he constantly forgives our sins and forgives our every debt, so that our hearts may overflow with hope and peace.”

Without forgiveness, there can be no peace. Ancient hatreds must be set aside and peoples who have long been at war with each other must be reconciled.

The Pax Christi (Peace of Christ) is God’s gift to the world. Announced by the angels to poor shepherds, this peace is very different from the Pax Romana, a purely political phenomenon. The temporary worldwide peace achieved by the Romans was a welcome change from the experience of constant warfare and oppression, but it didn’t last. The forces of social decline caused by greed, ambition and deeply ingrained social inequality made lasting peace impossible.

The peace that Christ brings into our broken world begins with mercy and calls for a recognition of unity in diversity. As the pope says:

“In teaching us to pray the Our Father, Jesus begins by asking the Father to forgive our trespasses but passes immediately to the challenging words: ‘as we forgive those who trespass against us’ [Mt 6:12]. In order to forgive others their trespasses and to offer them hope, we need for our own lives to be filled with that same hope, the fruit of our experience of God’s mercy. Hope overflows in generosity; it is free of calculation, makes no hidden demands, is unconcerned with gain, but aims at one thing alone: to raise up those who have fallen, to heal hearts that are broken and to set us free from every kind of bondage.”

Clearly there is no room for unbridled ambition or ruthless greed in the Pax Christi.

On the contrary, true peace is built by women and men who truly respect one another and the Earth that is their common home. From their own experience of God’s everlasting love and mercy, true peacemakers seek to be good and generous stewards of the priceless gift of peace.

From the depth of their hearts, people who work for peace cry out with our Holy Father:

“May 2025 be a year in which peace flourishes! A true and lasting peace that goes beyond quibbling over the details of agreements and human compromises. May we seek the true peace that is granted by God to hearts disarmed: hearts not set on calculating what is mine and what is yours; hearts that turn selfishness into readiness to reach out to others; hearts that see themselves as indebted to God and thus prepared to forgive the debts that oppress others; hearts that replace anxiety about the future with the hope that every individual can be a resource for the building of a better world.”

Peacemaking is the work of everyone who wants to live in a world that is free from radical poverty, homelessness, exploitation of people and natural resources, slavery, addiction, racism and the horrors of war.

Anyone who wants to live free in harmony with their neighbors and the world at large must resist the temptation to be indifferent to the evils around them. We must all work for peace—proactively—or risk being overwhelmed by the forces of hatred, disharmony and open warfare.

The pope concluded his World Day of Peace Message with this prayer:

“Lord, grant us your peace!
“Forgive us our trespasses, Lord,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
“In this cycle of forgiveness, grant us your peace,
“the peace that you alone can give
“to those who let themselves be disarmed in heart,
“to those who choose in hope to forgive the debts of their brothers and sisters,
“to those who are unafraid to confess their debt to you,
“and to those who do not close their ears to the cry of the poor.”

—Daniel Conway