ROME / TOKYO, November 4 (IPS) – Within the shadow of Rome’s Colosseum — as soon as a monument to imperial violence — spiritual leaders from internationally gathered this week to ship a message that felt each historic and pressing: peace should as soon as once more turn out to be humanity’s sacred obligation.
The event was “Dare Peace,” the Worldwide Assembly for Peace: Religions and Cultures in Dialogue, hosted by the Group of Sant’Egidio. For 3 days, clergymen, rabbis, imams, monks and students debated what it means to uphold religion in an period outlined by worry, nationalism and conflict.
The assembly concluded Tuesday night with Pope Leo XIV presiding over a ceremony that was equal components prayer service and political assertion.
“Warfare isn’t holy,” the pope mentioned. “Solely peace is holy — as a result of it’s willed by God.”
A Name for Ethical Braveness
Talking beneath the Arch of Constantine, Pope Leo urged governments and believers alike to withstand what he referred to as “the conceitedness of energy.”
“The world thirsts for peace,” he mentioned. “We can’t permit individuals to develop accustomed to conflict as a standard a part of human historical past. Sufficient — that is the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth.”
The group, a number of thousand robust, included representatives of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. Amongst them was Hirotsugu Terasaki, vp of Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist group with a protracted file of peace advocacy.
They stood collectively in silence as candles have been lit across the historic amphitheater — small lights flickering towards the stone, symbolic of a shared prayer for reconciliation.
Religion and Accountability
The pope’s speech drew a transparent line between religion and political duty.
“Peace should be the precedence of each coverage,” he mentioned. “God will maintain accountable those that failed to hunt peace — for every single day, month and 12 months of conflict.”
These phrases, delivered as combating continues in Ukraine and Gaza, carried a deliberate edge. The Vatican underneath Leo XIV has more and more positioned itself as an ethical counterweight to political paralysis on international crises — talking of peace not as abstraction however as obligation.
Classes From Assisi
This 12 months’s assembly marked practically 4 a long time since John Paul II convened the primary interreligious gathering for peace in Assisi in 1986. Since then, the Sant’Egidio Group has maintained that dialogue amongst faiths can mood political divides.
“We’ve dared to talk of peace in a world that speaks the language of conflict,” mentioned Marco Impagliazzo, the group’s president. “To shut the paths of dialogue is insanity. As Pope Francis mentioned, the world suffocates with out dialogue.”
Session on the Dignity of Life
Earlier Tuesday, Soka Gakkai delegation took half in Session 22 titled “Justice Does Not Kill: Abolishing the Dying Penalty,” held on the Austrian Cultural Discussion board.
Professor Enza Pellecchia of the College of Pisa, representing Soka Gakkai, took the stage and spoke concerning the motion’s efforts to abolish the dying penalty, referring to the phrases of its founder, President Daisaku Ikeda, from his dialogue with the British historian Dr. Arnold Toynbee.
“The sanctity of life can’t be judged by guilt or benefit — all lives are equal. Subsequently, nobody has the appropriate to take a life, even within the identify of justice. Accepting the dying penalty is a type of institutionalized violence that assigns completely different values to human life, and President Ikeda has described it as ‘a manifestation of the prevailing tendency in trendy instances to devalue life”.
Professor Pellecchia mentioned that President Ikeda’s humanistic philosophy deeply resonates with Pope Leo XIV’s latest assertion that “one can’t declare to be pro-life whereas accepting the dying penalty or any type of violence.” Each, she famous, confront the identical ethical error — the idea that some lives are expendable.
When Faith Refuses Silence
For many years, the Colosseum has hosted symbolic gatherings for peace. But this 12 months’s ceremony, contributors mentioned, carried a sharper urgency. The wars in Europe and the Center East, the displacement of tens of millions, and rising authoritarianism have all given ethical language new weight.
“Peace begins with the transformation of the human coronary heart,” mentioned Terasaki of SGI. “Interfaith cooperation just isn’t symbolic — it’s a way for altering historical past.”
A Plea That Nonetheless Echoes
As evening fell, the trumpeter Paolo Fresu carried out a mournful solo. Kids stepped ahead to ship a Peace Attraction to diplomats and officers — a reminder that the subsequent era will inherit the alternatives made now.
The pope’s remaining phrases have been transient, virtually whispered:
“God needs a world with out conflict. He’ll free us from this evil.”
The candles continued to burn as the gang dispersed — a fragile constellation of sunshine towards the ruins of Roman empire, and a quiet act of defiance in a world nonetheless studying to dare peace.
INPS Japan
IPS UN Bureau
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