Every year Pax Christi, the International Catholic Movement for Peace, promotes the Holy Father’s World Peace Day Message on the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. This is in the Liturgical Calendar cycle of prayer.
The organisation sends resource materials to every parish in the country to help them mark and celebrate the day – falling this year on Sunday 20 January.
The theme is taken from Pope Francis’s message ‘Good politics serves peace’.
The Archbishop of Liverpool, the Most Revd Malcolm McMahon OP is National President of Pax Christi’s UK section:
“Once again Pope Francis invites us to start a new year with a reflection on our role as peacemakers. Drawing on the evolving teaching of our church and looking at the ‘signs of the times’, Pope Francis is uncompromising in his challenge to war and violence. In his 2018 message Pope Francis wrote that the ‘endless and horrifying sequence of wars, conflicts, genocides and ethnic cleansings’ are a major cause of the migration of thousands around the globe. Pax Christi has sought to keep these issues in the forefront of its work – challenging Britain’s involvement in the global arms trade, questioning the morality of new technologies such as drone warfare – both here in the UK, and internationally, through our status at the UN.”
You can read the full text of the Pope’s World Peace Day Message. Here are a few key quotes:
“One thing is certain: good politics is at the service of peace. It respects and promotes fundamental human rights, which are at the same time mutual obligations, enabling a bond of trust and gratitude to be forged between present and future generations… today more than ever, our societies need ‘artisans of peace’ who can be messengers and authentic witnesses of God the Father, who wills the good and the happiness of the human family.”
Pax Christi is offering resources for parishes that can be downloaded:
catholicnews.org.uk/world-day-of-peace-2019
Pope Francis’s World Day of Peace Message “Politics must serve peace”.
paxchristi.org.uk
Official website for Pax Christi – the International Catholic Movement for Peace.
