John Dear’s first day on the job at Pace e Bene—March 1, 2013—was spent in Oslo, Norway at the launch of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).  He and actor Martin Sheen, a long-time friend, had arrived from the United States to lend their support for this breathtaking global initiative.  Four years later, ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for mobilizing worldwide to spur the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

It was uncannily appropriate that John began his work with us jump-starting a global strategy to ban nuclear arms.  For decades he had been campaigning for nuclear disarmament, an effort that accelerated when he moved to New Mexico, where he helped organize an annual protest at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the site where the nuclear bombs used in Japan at the end of World War II were built. 

But years before that, he and I were part of a valiant group called the Livermore Conversion Project that organized regular demonstrations at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California, which, like Los Alamos, is a top-secret facility designing nuclear weapons. One Good Friday in the early 1990s, John persuaded iconic anti-nuclear activist Phillip Berrigan and other luminaries to join a few hundred of us in crossing the line at the lab and to spend that holy day in jail.

And, long before this, John had cut his antinuclear teeth taking part in powerful civil disobedience actions at another nuclear weapons facility, Riverside Research Institute in New York City, in tow with John’s friend and mentor – and Phillip’s brother – Daniel Berrigan.

Coming to Pace e Bene

John brought his unstinting work for a nuclear weapons-free future to Pace e Bene, as well as his many other commitments to justice and peace, always with a front-and-center focus on the creative and liberating power of nonviolence.  This was not simply a political agenda.  As a Catholic priest, John Dear for decades had been relentlessly pursuing a spiritual path of nonviolent transformation throughout the United States and around the world.

The possibility of John joining us started with a few conversations in 2012, which led to his joining the entire Pace e Bene crew at a retreat in a run-down, abandoned convent in Chicago that summer.  Amid the stifling humidity—there was no air conditioning—we hatched a vision of the next steps that our then-twenty-year-old organization could take. 

One vision John brought was a march from Dr. Martin Luther King’s national memorial in Washington to the White House. 

Many other ideas started to simmer there, including the possibility of organizing a movement for a culture of nonviolence.  We marinated in this vision over the next months, and by the time John joined our staff, Campaign Nonviolence had begun to take shape.  Eventually, we came to see that its uniqueness would center on the idea of connecting the dots between war, poverty, racism and environmental destruction.  We decided, as part of this effort, to invite the country to take action for a nonviolent future for an entire week in September, anchored by the International Day of Peace.

John was key to helping to get Campaign Nonviolence off the ground, with a 50-city speaking tour throughout the winter and spring of 2014.  Ryan Hall built a great website and a handful of us led Campaign Nonviolence skill-building workshops in Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. But by barnstorming the country to spread the news about this new week of actions, John recruited people everywhere to sign on. 

That September, 240 marches and demonstrations rallying for active nonviolence took place in all 50 states. (Getting every state was important to us.  As we headed into the last week, we still needed four of them.  John and I divvied up the list and, after endless phone calls, the last states committed.) 

Each year since then, this effort has grown.  Last month, during the seventh Campaign Nonviolence Week of Actions, over 4,000 events took place, again in all 50 states, and 25 countries. (We are grateful to CNV Action Coordinator Dr. Kit Evans-Ford for her tireless organizing to make this a reality, for all the work Pace e Bene Training Director Veronica Pelicaric poured into this movement, as well as all the work that Ryan Hall, Erin Bechtol, Lindsay Mitnik, Rivera Sun and many CNV organizers across the country did over these years to make this effort a success,) 

On the fifth annual Action Week—September 2018—John’s early vision of a march from Dr. King’s monument to the White House was fulfilled.

Translating Dreams into Reality

This is one of the great things about John: he has a dogged commitment to seeing his vision achieved. 

He thought it would be great to have a national nonviolence conference in 2015 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which would include vigils at Los Alamos on August 6 and August 9 (the 70th anniversary of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)—and, yes, it happened.

He dreamed up the idea of a pilgrimage to Assisi, Italy to follow in the footsteps of the nonviolent Saint Francis —and, yes, it happened.

He was so moved by Nonviolent Carbondale (a long-term project in Southern Illinois helping an entire city, step by step, become nonviolent) that he asked the organizers for permission to start the Nonviolent Cities Project to spread this idea far and wide—and, yes, it happened.

He envisioned many speaking tours, speaking events, retreats, a monthly Peace Podcast, and even spiritual direction by phone. And, yes, they happened.

He decided to write a book for Pace e Bene called The Nonviolent Life, which would illuminate the facets of the Campaign Nonviolence Pledge—being nonviolent to ourselves, to all others, and to the entire world by joining the global movements for change. Pace e Bene Press also published his book, Radical Prayers.  All this took place as he continued to write many other books, including Praise Be Peace: Psalms of Peace and Nonviolence in a Time of War and Climate Change, which mesmerized me. His many visions and ideas have come forth, wanting to find themselves taking form and flight—and, yes, they all happened.

It would likely take many books to chronicle the adventures of these years. There were the Big Things—like all the years we’ve worked on inviting the Catholic Church to recommit to nonviolence by organizing conferences, writing tomes, speaking, and attending endless meetings, but also having delicious meals at a favorite restaurant on Isola Tiberina, the island in the middle of the Tiber, down the river from the Vatican.  But there was also the many staff retreats at the Franciscan retreat center in Scottsdale and in Taos and on the mountaintop where John once lived on. And many other things as well.

Yes, it all happened. 

And we are grateful.

John has discerned that it is time for him to move on.  I will miss our virtually daily contact for the past seven years, but I imagine there will be new adventures.

Thank you, John, for all the gifts you have brought. 

Thank you for all that happened. 

And for all that will happen going forward.