There can be no surrender to a culture of violence and no passive acceptance that war is inevitable, said a Vatican representative to a United Nations.In Jan. 31 remarks at an interreligious service here focused on Pope Benedict XVI’s World Day of Peace message, “The Human Person, the Hear of Peace,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi (pic'd here), head of the Vatican permanent observer mission of the Holy See to the U.N. and other international organizations in Geneva, drew a clear distinction between the tolerance and respect founded on justice.
The question of “how to bring healing to the world” is answered, he said, by going “beyond mere tolerance and reach out to others on the base of respect and justice.”
“The need to move beyond tolerance resides in the fact that this is a kind of passive acceptance of others imposed by law, a first step for sure but without personal involvement,” Archbishop Tomasi told representatives of the Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist communities.
“A civilization of tolerance is built on a mine field: when attention lowers, the mines explode,” he said.
Respect, he said, looks instead at others of different nations, beliefs or cultures as “partners in the same humanity, children of the same creator, with the same aspirations for a happy and peaceful life.”
The apostolic nuncio said that “the search for peace begins in the heart of every individual” and progresses to countries and international organizations when “founded on the respect of the person, the right to life and religious freedom, the free exercise of basic human rights, the elimination of unjust inequalities.”
Effective dialogue and negotiations, he added, “rest on the two pillars of respect and justice” and in relationships that test “the sincerity of our words and agreements.”
Calling peace “a gift to be welcomed,” Archbishop Tomasi stressed that it is something that must be sought and won.
“There is no surrender to the culture of conflict; no acceptance that clashes are unavoidable and that war is ever natural,” he said.
While noting that international organizations and nations represented there are working to “respond to the natural desire of the human family for peace,” the nuncio said it would be “naïve” not to acknowledge the presence of violence in the world today poses increasingly complex challenges to the global community.”
“The work for peace implies now closing the gap between the rich and the poor; putting an end to civil wars, to terrorism, and all armed conflicts; stopping a revived arms race and the proliferation of a variety of weapons; rejecting the glorification of violence in the media,” Archbishop Tomasi said.
“Millions of people are affected by current wars and civilians are targeted with total disregard of humanitarian law,” he added. “These victims and the millions of forcibly displaced persons call for peace, for respect of their human dignity.”
Despite these challenges and breaks in the unity of the human family, he said that “a vision of peace is deeply rooted in the core values and insights shared by all faith traditions that God our creator has endowed each person with an inalienable dignity and thus given us equality of rights and duties and established and unbreakable solidarity among all women and men.”
“By walking together on the path of dialogue, respect, justice and love,” Archbishop Tomasi concluded, “God’s gift of peace can be ours even today.”
In a Nov. 16 address to the third special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council here, Archbishop Tomasi touched on similar themes, noting that the global “family” of nations has a “moral responsibility to promote a mentality of peace” and break the vicious cycle of violence.
The Vatican’s representative to United Nations here called on the international community to adopt “a courageous method of real dialogue that enables placing on the table the real problems calling for solution no matter how different at the start are the points of view.”
“Peaceful coexistence is possible if justice and reconciliation create the context for collaboration and mutual security,” the archbishop said.
Further, he stressed, the international community must accept its “moral responsibility to promote a mentality of peace; to collaborate through practical measures for the elimination of the deep cultural, social and economic roots of violence; to aid and enable the parties involved in pursuing a fruitful collaboration.”
That responsibility is owed, he added, to the civilian population as well as “women and children struck down by unwarranted violence” and to “young military lives cut short with dreams unfulfilled.”
“Violence never pays and generates new sorrows,” Archbishop Tomasi said. “Respect of basic human rights, above all the right to life, is not an abstract consideration, but an approach that pays a rich dividend in its political consequences: It makes possible the reaping and enjoyment of the fruits of peace.”
GENEVA, Switzerland (Catholic Online)
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