From left: Cardinal Turkson, Dr. Ken Butigan, Rev. John Dear and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mairead Maguire
PACE E BENE’S WORK WITH THE CATHOIC NONVIOLENCE INITIATIVE
Pace e Bene is contributing to a growing movement to advance the vision and methods of nonviolence in the Catholic Church. Working with Pax Christ International’s Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, we are inviting Pope Francis to advance nonviolence at every level of the church.
Nonviolence lay at the heart of Jesus’ mission. Living under Roman occupation and facing the dehumanizing violence of his time, Jesus proclaimed a new, nonviolent order rooted in the unconditional love of God. Though Christianity maintained the centrality of nonviolence in its first three centuries, it has since often lost sight of this core principle and way of life.
Pace e Bene’s Ken Butigan with Pope Francis
Pace e Bene, working with partners around the world, helped organized a landmark conference on active nonviolence co-sponsored by the Vatican and Pax Christi International in Rome in 2016. This powerful assembly of theologians, practitioners and church leaders from every continent issued a final statement entitled, “An Appeal to the Catholic Church to Re-Commit to the Centrality of Gospel Nonviolence.” To help move this work forward, the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative (CNI) was formed. Pace e Bene is part of this international network, and serves on its executive committee.
In 2017, Pope Francis issued an historic World Day of Peace message entitled, “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace.,” a theme that Pax Christi and Pace e Bene had proposed. After meetings with Vatican officials, CNI has launched an ambitious research project to develop content for a major Church teaching on Gospel nonviolence. In April 2019, CNI delivered the findings of this research at “Path of Nonviolence: Toward a Culture of Peace,” an international consultation in Rome co-sponsoted by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Human Integral Development and Pax Christi International.
