Together for Peace
Florence, September 3, 2024
The John Paul II Foundation joins the initiative promoted by some Florentine parishes to call for peace, "If you want peace, prepare peace." We reproduce the poster that the communities have prepared to invite everyone to Isolotto for Sunday, September 15.
The John Paul II Foundation, which has been working in the Middle East for more than twenty-five years, joins the invitation to participate in the prayer meeting for peace, sponsored by a number of Florentine parishes, for Sunday, September 15 in the Isolotto square in Florence.
The Foundation fully endorses what the parish communities wrote, "Peace will never be the fruit of distrust, the fruit of walls, of weapons pointed at one another. St. Paul says, "Each one will reap what he has sown" (Gal 6:7). Brothers and sisters, our civilizations right now are sowing destruction, fear. Let us, brothers and sisters, sow hope! Let us be sowers of hope" (Pope Francis).
Pope Francis was one of the first to declare that the world was experiencing the third undeclared world war; he was the first to call for a cease-fire and has repeatedly expressed the urgency to sit at the table and negotiate: "because war is in itself a crime against humanity" (Angelus of January 14, 2024). The John Paul II Foundation strongly calls for an end to the more than 30 wars that are bloodying the world, claiming victims almost exclusively among civilians and, above all, among women and children.
The Foundation demands that Israel and Palestine sit down at a table to build peace, aided in this by the International Community. It calls for the release of all Israeli hostages in the hands of Hamas, for the Israeli army to cease its war in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We strongly call for the International Community to help the peace process and the establishment of two states, which everyone wants today, and the only solution to start building a process of peace and hope for all those living in Israel and Palestine. But peace needs each of us to make daily efforts.
"And peace can be built if we begin to be at peace with ourselves - at peace within, in our hearts - and with those around us, removing the obstacles that prevent us from caring for those in need and destitution. It is about developing a mindset and culture of "caring," in order to defeat indifference, to defeat discard and rivalry -- indifference, discard, rivalry --, which unfortunately prevail. Remove these attitudes. And so peace is not just the absence of war. Peace is never aseptic, no, there is no such thing as quirofano [Spanish: "operating room"] peace. Peace is in life: it is not only the absence of war, but it is life rich in meaning, set and lived in personal fulfillment and fraternal sharing with others. Then that peace so longed for and always endangered by violence, selfishness and wickedness, that endangered peace becomes possible and realizable if I take it as my God-given task." (Pope Francis, Angelus Jan. 1, 2021).
Prayer for Peace Poster - Isolotto 15/09/2024