Peace on earth - a constant endeavour

Human rights in Africa

Church leaders in Northern Uganda have struggled to bring about a peace process between the government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group at war with the State for 16 years. The LRA frequently abducts civilians, either boys to serve as fighters, or girls as sex slaves, for rebel commanders. At the end of August 2002, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda expressed willingness to dialogue with the rebels and consider a possible cease-fire. The launching of these peace talks was primarily due to the action of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, chaired by Archbishop John Baptist Odama of Gulu. He has vigorously deplored the continuous attacks against civilians perpetrated by the rebels and urged them to allow the people of the Acholi districts, currently sheltered in protected camps, to be allowed to return to their homes and live in peace.

The Church in Angola struggled to promote peace and support victims of conflict during the 27-year-long civil war. The end of fighting in April 2002 revealed a humanitarian crisis previously hidden as hundreds of thousands of starving civilians emerged from rural areas to which humanitarian agencies had been denied access by both the Angolan Armed Forces and UNITA rebels. Angola now has the highest number of internally displaced people in the world - four million - and one of the highest concentrations of landmines and landmine victims. Church work has included identifying humanitarian needs for foreign donors. In October 2002, for example, the bishop chair of Caritas Angola, a leading Catholic aid organisation, hosted a visit to the country by the wife of the President of Portugal, Angola's former colonial power, who was interested in raising funds at home to support development in Angola. Bishop Francisco da Mata Mourisca of Uije accompanied Mrs. Maria José Ritta Sampaio as she toured Church projects in the capital Luanda, witnessing training initiatives in joinery and computing plus projects concerning education, nutrition and sanitation. She travelled to the northern Uije province where displaced people are returning to their areas of origin and finding that former homes and fields have been destroyed. The bishop told her that inspection teams, organised by Caritas Angola, are currently moving into villages, inaccessible during the war, where they are finding many people suffering from Sleeping Sickness without access to treatment.

Interfaith dialogue in Asia

In the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country, the Church was fully involved in November's 'Week of Peace' on Mindanao, a southern island with a significant Muslim population and rebel insurgency. The event aimed 'to raise consciousness for a culture of peace among the peoples of Mindanao' and an interfaith forum, involving Bishops and church leaders of other Christian denominations and faiths, prepared literature for it. A follow-up 'Muslim-Christian Youth Peace Camp' took place in early December. Meanwhile, a key mediator in peace talks between the Philippine government and Islamic rebel groups in Mindanao has been a Catholic priest, Fr. Eliseo Mercado OMI. The president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato, regularly prays alongside other religious leaders, including Muslims and Hindus, for 'an end to senseless and brutal violence'.

Church communications specialists and journalists in Indonesia attended a seminar on 10 October near Jakarta which examined ways in which the faith media can 'develop community awareness' and help people to 'see worthy values in others'. During a seminar on 'Globalisation, Religions and Media in the Islamic World: An Intercultural Dialogue,' Jesuit Father Mario Antonius Birowo from the Jesuit-run Audio-Visual Studio Catechetical Center in Yogyakarta gave a presentation highlighting the importance of 'peace journalism' in fostering interfaith harmony within Indonesia, a country which has seen inter-religious conflict in many regions in recent years. He spoke of a specific programme produced by his centre called 'Faith Refreshment'. Unlike other programmes that promote 'the only truth' of one religion, 'Faith Refreshment' presents people of various faiths discussing a selected topic. Fr. Birowo said that, instead of promoting exclusivism and fanaticism, the programme aims to promote harmony in pluralistic Indonesia. The seminar concluded that journalists working in Islamic and Western media should focus their reporting on the common ground of humanity.

Mediation in Latin America

Colombia is one of the most violent countries in the world, with political fighting, drug cartels, kidnappings, guerrilla insurgencies, violence and gross human rights violations. President Alvaro Uribe came to power in August 2002, pledging to fight both left-wing rebels and right-wing paramilitaries to end violence that has claimed about 200,000 lives over the past 38 years and displaced more than two million people. With US financial support, he planned to restore stability in isolated areas now controlled by rebels and paramilitaries, and hold peace talks with the right-wing squads. In November 2002, the Catholic Church in Colombia expressed willingness to play a key role in any fresh peace initiative. Cardinal Pedro Rubiano, archbishop of Bogota and president of the episcopal conference, immediately called on the government, paramilitaries and the two main rebel groups Ð the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) - to commit themselves to reconciliation, 'so that we all recognise each other as sons of the same homeland, with the possibility of a reconciliation.' The paramilitary leader, Carlos Castano of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), acknowledged that the Catholic Church, along with the United Nations, would play a crucial role in mediation efforts.

Speaking out against the men of violence has been costly for many church people in Colombia. Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino of Cali, was shot dead on 16 March 2002 in the city. He had been outspoken in his criticism of the continuing violence. He attacked both the FARC and ELN rebel groups for kidnapping innocent people. 'We ask God that the guerrilla fighters in Colombia may feel deep sorrow in their souls for the evil they commit when they kill an innocent, defenceless brother or sister,' he said in 2000. After the ELN kidnapped the entire congregation of a Cali church in 1999, he publicly excommunicated all its members. The Colombian church is supported by church organisations internationally. Catholic Relief Services in the US, for example, provides aid to internally displaced and returning communities. It collaborates with the Jesuit Mobile School for Peace and Coexistence which works to develop local level peacebuilding and conflict transformation capacity in select dioceses. It helps to increase US understanding of the Colombia situation by organising visits to the US of Colombian partners, especially church representatives, to discuss the complex situation with the US public and politicians.

The Columbian Army announced on 15 November the rescue of Bishop Jorge Enrique Jiménez Carvajal, president of the Latin American council of bishops, CELAM, and parish priest Fr Desiderio Orjuela. The two were kidnapped four days earlier by armed men who intercepted their vehicle en route to a Confirmation ceremony. There was enormous relief since more than 20 priests and two bishops have been killed in the Colombian civil war since 1989. The two men were released unharmed after troops stormed a rebel hideout.

The 60-year-old bishop was reportedly seized by three or four members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's oldest and best-armed rebel group and the priest volunteered to remain with him. Bishop Jiménez serves as archbishop of Zipaquira, near Bogota, and residents there reacted emotionally to the kidnapping, marching through the streets to demand his release. Pope John Paul II also appealed for the safe release of the two clergymen, and called on the kidnappers to abandon all forms of violence.

International security

On the international scene, Sant'Egidio, a Catholic lay organisation based in Rome, has made dramatic high level interventions to promote peace in Mozambique, Burundi, Congo, Algeria, Kosovo, and elsewhere. Its peacemaking style is deeply rooted in Catholic tradition and theology. The very close linkage forged between peace, on the one hand, and justice and human rights on the other, makes peace with justice a basic tenet of Catholic peacemaking.

The Iraq crisis has prompted Catholic peace and humanitarian organisations around the world to warn that war on Iraq would have disastrous consequences for the Iraqi people, where 800,000 children are already chronically malnourished and where three quarters of a million people are already internally displaced. An ecumenical declaration, circulated by Pax Christi since July 2002 and carrying 8,000 signatures urging a non-military response to the situation, was presented to the British prime minister, Tony Blair, on 22 November. 'Pre-emptive war by one state against another is not permitted by the UN Charter, no matter how much evidence there may be of a potential for violence,' it said. On 1 November, a delegation of Caritas Internationalis which had recently visited Iraq urged its network of Catholic organisations 'to mobilise its membership and its advocates to urge their governments to oppose the resort to war and continue doggedly to pursue peaceful solutions to the present crisis.' The delegation called for Catholics to undertake a prayer action for peace in Iraq and the whole Middle-East region every Friday until the crisis passed.

Catholic peace building

Despite the criticisms that have been leveled at the Church for not contributing to peace adequately at the time of the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda, the Catholic Church internationally has an impressive record of peacemaking initiatives. Following the Second Vatican Council, the establishment of bishops' conferences throughout the world, and of justice and peace commissions, has enhanced the church's ability to promote conflict resolution. Vatican pronouncements have given more attention in recent years to non-violence and downplayed just-war analysis.

In today's world, Catholic peace building must deal with the social and psychological conditions necessary for peace, and must be 'an ecumenical and interreligious task,' according to Catholic historian R. Scott Appleby. Speaking in New York on 6 November 2002, he traced a 'line of developments' from the encyclical Pacem in Terris, to the documents of Vatican II and subsequent papal teaching, to concrete actions such as the establishment in 1973 of the Vicariate for Solidarity in Chile and the mediating role of bishops in such regions as El Salvador, East Timor and Chiapas, Mexico. These developments reflected 'the success of Catholic social teaching in being absorbed into the bloodstream of the Catholic community,' he said. Looking to the future, he felt that nonviolent approaches to conflict transformation could become a factor that further develops the ethical tradition and undercuts the stance of those who maintain a presumption in favour of using force to resolve tensions. Appropriate non-violent techniques are only now being developed by Catholic groups in collaboration with other Christian denominations such as the Mennonites.

Traditional Catholic peacemaking at a national level will probably be strengthened in the future by the work of peacemakers - largely lay people - carrying out economic and social programmes to reduce conflict at the grass-roots level. Perhaps the embracing of pro-active efforts for peace with justice by all the People of God was foreseen four decades ago. In 1963, Dorothy Day, a founder of the pacifist Catholic Worker Movement in the US, was one of 50 'Mothers for Peace' who went to Rome to thank Pope John XXIII for his encyclical Pacem in Terris. Close to death, the Pope couldn't meet them privately, but at one of his last public audiences blessed the pilgrims, asking them to continue their labours.