from Pax Christi International
We hope you are able to join us next Thursday, 21 October, at 10 AM EDT for the launch of Pax Christi International’s new publication, “A Policymaker’s Tool for Effective Nonviolent Strategies for Sustainable Peace”.
In his 2017 World Day of Peace message, Pope Francis wrote: “This is … a programme and a challenge for political and religious leaders, the heads of international institutions, and business and media executives: to apply the Beatitudes in the exercise of their respective responsibilities. It is a challenge to build up society, communities and businesses by acting as peacemakers. It is to show mercy by refusing to discard people, harm the environment, or seek to win at any cost. To do so requires ‘the willingness to face conflict head on, to resolve it and to make it a link in the chain of a new process’. To act in this way means to choose solidarity as a way of making history and building friendship in society. Active nonviolence is a way of showing that unity is truly more powerful and more fruitful than conflict. Everything in the world is inter-connected. Certainly differences can cause frictions. But let us face them constructively and nonviolently, so that ‘tensions and oppositions can achieve a diversified and lifegiving unity,’ preserving “what is valid and useful on both sides”.
The Catholic Nonviolence Initiative strives to promote this vision of active nonviolence as an applicable and transformative method of governance. We know through social scientists such as Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan that nonviolent strategies are more effective at maintaining positive social change. We hope policymakers will consider the proposals offered in this new publication, will share them with colleagues, and will make real efforts to embody new and creative approaches to policy.
“A Policymaker’s Tool for Effective Nonviolent Strategies for Sustainable Peace” will be available in English, French, Spanish and Italian – it will be posted on the Pax Christi International website next week.
Click here for more information and for registration.