Promotion of world peace

For January 2020, the Holy Father inaugurates the fifth year of The Pope Video – an initiative of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network that disseminates his monthly prayer intentions – with a special intention: inviting Christians, other believers, and all men and women of good will to promote a world of justice and peace. According to Francis, “in a divided and fragmented world” people must spread the values of peace and harmonious coexistence “through a culture of dialogue and reciprocal understanding.”

This is not the first time that the Pope has called for worldwide peace and justice. At the beginning of 2019, he directed a message to the members of the diplomatic corps in which he said that “Peace is never a partial good, but one that embraces the entire human race.” In his message for the celebration of the 53rd World Day of Peace, he added, “We need to pursue a genuine fraternity based on our common origin from God and exercised in dialogue and mutual trust. The desire for peace lies deep within the human heart, and we should not resign ourselves to seeking anything less than this.”

Fr Donal Neary SJ, editor of The Sacred Heart Messenger, reflects on the Pope’s intention in Living Prayer. He says, “We are all people who can be touched by the oppression and hardships of so many, nearby and faraway, and from our search for the God of love, can be active signs of God in our world. In the promotion of the faith that does justice we are committed to be men and women for others, peacemakers in the example of Jesus, Prince of Peace. ”

Click on the link above to watch the video.