Message of Benedict XVI to the plenary of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, who met on "The Global Quest for Tranquillitatis Ordinis. Pacem in terris, Fifty Years Later". " Pacem in Terris "was and is" also "a powerful invitation" to engage in a "creative dialogue between the Church and the world between believers and nonbelievers.

 

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - The notion of forgiveness needs to find its way into international discourse on conflict resolution. This is required today, for the goal of world peace, the same as 50 years ago when it prompted John XXIII to write Pacem in Terris (in the picture: the time of signature). Benedict XVI writes in his message to the president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Mary Ann Glendon, and participants at the 18th plenary session of the Academy on the theme: "The Quest for Global Ordinis Tranquillitatis. Pacem in Terris, Fifty Years Later."

The encyclical of 1963 is a lesson for today's world: it turned the heart of humanity to remember the value of peace in a time when nuclear war seemed a real possibility. "Since 1963, some of the conflicts that seemed insoluble at the time have passed into history", which should strengthen the "struggle for peace and justice in the world today, confident that our common pursuit of the divinely established order, of a world where the dignity of every human person is accorded the respect that is due, can and will bear fruit. "

 "The vision offered by Pope John - writes Benedict XVI - still has much to teach us as we struggle to face the new challenges for peace and justice in the post-Cold-War era, amid the continuing proliferation of armaments."

Pacem in Terris "was and is a powerful summons to engage in that creative dialogue between the Church and the world, between believers and non-believers," in the spirit of Vatican II and Pope John XXIII.

" In that same spirit, after the terrorist attacks that shook the world in September 2001, Blessed John Paul II insisted that there can be "no peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness" (Message for the 2002 World Day of Peace). The notion of forgiveness needs to find its way into international discourse on conflict resolution, so as to transform the sterile language of mutual recrimination which leads nowhere. If the human creature is made in the image of God, a God of justice who is "rich in mercy" (Eph 2:4), then these qualities need to be reflected in the conduct of human affairs. It is the combination of justice and forgiveness, of justice and grace, which lies at the heart of the divine response to human wrong-doing (cf. Spe Salvi, 44), at the heart, in other words, of the "divinely established order" (Pacem in Terris, 1). Forgiveness is not a denial of wrong-doing, but a participation in the healing and transforming love of God which reconciles and restores."

Even the recent Synod on the Churches of Africa and the Middle East, Benedict XVI concluded, showed that "historic wrongs and injustices can only be overcome if men and women are inspired by a message of healing and hope, a message that offers a way forward, out of the impasse that so often locks people and nations into a vicious circle of violence. "

 

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