By Johnny Zokovitch
This week I visited Brussels, Belgium, home to Pax Christi International where I worked from 2016-2019. The visit had me recalling both my time at the International Secretariat as well as the relationship between Pax Christi USA and the international movement.
One of the things that I think goes unappreciated by many of us who count ourselves as part of the Pax Christi USA community is the larger network to which we belong and the history which is our legacy.
We, Pax Christi USA, belong to an international movement that arose from the death and destruction of World War II, when French and German Catholics who had slaughtered each other by the millions twice in a period of 30 years looked at each other and said, “How? How can two people who share the same faith, worship the same God, follow the same Jesus – how can we hate and kill one another?”
From that beginning, Pax Christi International has grown to include over 100 member organizations in more than 50 countries around the world, from the DR Congo to the Philippines, from New Zealand to Brazil, Poland to the United States. As a staff member at the International Secretariat, I got to see firsthand how Pax Christi member organizations are transforming and challenging injustice, violence and conflict through the power of nonviolence and reconciliation all over the world: whether at conferences in Kenya and New Zealand, regional assemblies in South Africa and the Philippines, commemorating the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb with our Japanese colleagues in Hiroshima, or on pilgrimage visiting the battlefields where millions died in World War I in France with members from our European sections.
My time working as part of the team in Brussels overlapped with the creation and first steps of the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, a project that has exerted a deep influence over the thinking of Pope Francis – and now Pope Leo – on the development of the Church’s understanding of nonviolence as inherent in her mission to the world. Pope Francis’s 2017 World Day of Peace message, Nonviolence, A style of politics for peace, incorporated 75-80 percent of the information that we had been encouraged to submit to the pope in anticipation of its proclamation. And one of the recent final reports from the Synod on Synodality highlighted nonviolence as an emerging issue for further reflection and discussion at every level of the Church. Such influence is not new for Pax Christi International, but includes how we helped to steer the papal encyclical of St. John XXIII, Pacem in terris; the leadership of Pax Christi USA bishops on defining documents like The Challenge of Peace (1983) and Economic Justice for All (1985); and more recently the intimate involvement of key Pax Christi leaders in the implementation of Laudato Si and the integration of nonviolence into the Laudato Si action plan and the Vatican’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of the most significant characteristics that I have found within Pax Christi International in my 35+ years of being part of this moment is the enduring belief that the work of peace is both about social transformation AND personal transformation. I have experienced this aspect of personal transformation in my own journey as a peacemaker, most poignantly in the challenging and supportive relationships I have found in the movement.
Just prior to joining the International Secretariat in Brussels, I participated in the US delegation to Pax Christi International’s World Assembly in Bethlehem in 2015. Up until then, my experience with Pax Christi had been almost completely at the domestic level, engaging from the perspective of living in the United States. But at the 2015 assembly, I had uplifting encounters connecting with others working for human rights and peace around the world. I cannot adequately express the joy and appreciation of hearing the stories of my colleagues — their victories and challenges, the interesting and inspiring and effective programs they are undertaking, and the commitment they live out on a daily basis, often in situations of profound violence, sometimes with serious threats on their lives and their families.
I was moved by the solidarity of people each carrying the weight of their own challenges but gathered together to support as one the work of our Palestinian member organizations, marching as one in a procession along the Separation Wall that serves as a testament of the oppression that Palestinians live under in the Occupied West Bank.
“Viewed from the perspective of a single individual’s efforts, or even the work of a single organization, the work of peace seems all too often to be fruitless, pointless and ineffective. We struggle against powers far beyond what any one of us can match.
“But there is hope in knowing that others, all across the world, are throwing their own tiny ropes and trying to wrangle the beast to the ground. There is hope in knowing that at every minute of every day we are working alongside brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and throughout the Americas who are doing their part. … I am neither alone nor part of a small minority. I have partners, brothers and sisters in the struggle. We are many and strong.”
The gratitude that I have for these co-workers who have become my friends knows no limit. Their faces and their stories are ever-present in my mind, and I am heartened by how the small work I continue to do contributes to all they do for peace, and the work so many known and unknown others in Pax Christi have done –faithfully, committedly – all over the world for decades.
Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of thePax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership atSt. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis. Read more from Johnny at https://johnnyzokovitch.substack.com/and sign up there to receive his articles directly to your email inbox.