Roman Pope Addresses Christians on World Day of Peace

The year 2011 is the 25th anniversary of the World Day of Prayer for Peace convened by Pope John Paul II in Assisi in 1986. In this year’s address for the Day of Peace, which was marked on January 1, Pope Benedict mentioned Iraq, which remains an arena of bloodshed and feuds. The pope particularly mentioned the cruel attack on the Catholic Cathedral of the Mother of God in Bagdad where two priests and over fifty faithful were killed on October 31. 

Pope Benedict stresses that in religious freedom, the whole specificity of a human is expressed. According to the pope, the right to religious freedom follows from the dignity of a person and religious freedom is the source of moral freedom because, as the address says, openness to the truth and perfect good, openness to God are rooted in human nature. 

At the same time, the pope stressed that the school of freedom and peace is the family and that is why parents must have opportunities to pass to their children the heritage of faith, values and culture freely, responsibly and without any restrictions.

Pope Benedict says that religious freedom is an asset of not only believers but of the whole family of the peoples of the Earth. “It is a substantial component of the constitutional order in the state; negation of religious freedom is also an encroachment on all the fundamental rights and freedoms as religious freedom is their synthesis and acme. One may call it 'a litmus paper of respect for all the other human rights,' reads the address of the pope translated by the Justice and Peace Committee of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).

The address also says that religious freedom is the driving force in the way of freedom and civilization.

 “To defend religion means to defend the rights and freedoms of religious communities. The leaders of the world’s great religions and rulers of the states should defend and establish religious freedom, particularly, the rights of religious minorities with a renewed determination…The world needs God. It needs universal common moral and spiritual values, and religion can substantially help them in their search in the name of development of a peaceful and just social order both in separate states and in the whole world,” reads the address.

The pope said that peace is a gift of God and, at the same time, a task for humankind and called everyone willing to be a peacemaker, especially young people, “to follow the voice of their hearts and find in God the firm foundation for the development of genuine freedom and also inexhaustible strength which will help them with a new spirit to direct the world so that it should never repeat the mistakes of the past.”