Every year we celebrate the world peace day.
Pope Francis’ World Peace Day message in 2017 was to help the Church become “a light to the nations, so that the salvation of God may reach to the ends of the earth” (reading of last Sunday).
As you may know, I am also the airport chaplain in Berlin (Tegel, Schoenefeld, soon BER) – in June 2019 we had a worldwide meeting in Rome organized by the “dicastero per il servizio dello sviluppo umano integrale”, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. The pope created the dicastero in January 2017.
Here is the Pope’s text:
“I pledge the assistance of the Church in every effort to build peace through active and creative nonviolence. On the 1st of January 2017, the new Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development begins its work. It will help the Church to promote in an ever more effective way ‘the inestimable goods of justice, peace, and the care of creation’ and concern for ‘migrants, those in need, the sick, the excluded and marginalized, the imprisoned and the unemployed, as well as victims of armed conflict, natural disasters, and all forms of slavery and torture.’ Every such response, however modest, helps to build a world free of violence, the first step towards justice and peace.”
Pope Francis in 2017
Is what the Pope describes only the task and duty of the “dicastery” in Rome or is it a task and duty of all of us? How do we react as church members to this invitation from the side of the Pope?