Parolin, who has just returned from a four day trip to Russia, says: "I tried above all to say this, this was the message that I wanted to convey: Russia, for its geographical position, its history, its culture, and its past, present, and future, has an important role to play in the international community and in the world.

"Therefore, it has a particular responsibility regarding peace: both the country and its leaders have a great responsibility to build peace, and they must truly strive to put the higher interests of peace above all other interests," Parolin says.

Besides Putin, Parolin met with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Kirill, and Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, who is the chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations.

Parolin says Francis was happy to hear about the "positive result" of his visit to Russia.

Francis "is very, very attentive to all opportunities for dialogue that there can be, he is very attentive to value all the dialogues we have and he is very happy when making steps in this direction," Parolin says.

Source

• CNA
• Sputnik International
• Image: CNA

Seeing this, one of Jesus' disciples "put his hand to his sword, drew it, and struck the high priest's servant, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.'"

Tragically, throughout the centuries much of humanity has failed to heed the Lord's wisdom.

And worse, today's swords are far more lethal. Bullets, bombs, missiles, tanks, land minds, aircraft carriers, fighter jets inflict far more carnage than ancient swords could ever do. And modern nuclear weapons could obliterate life on earth.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, (http://bit.ly/1TW3Gj5) world military expenditure was estimated at more than $1.7 trillion in 2014.

President Obama's proposed fiscal year 2017 Department of Defense basic budget comes in at a whopping $582.7 billion. More than the next seven largest military budgets combined - including China, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

As reported by the New York Times (http://nyti.ms/1XgNZWD), American foreign arms sales rose to $36.2 billion in 2014, continuing to ensure the U.S.'s position as the world's single largest arms merchant - controlling more than 50 percent of the weapon's market.

Many of these weapons continue to be sold to poor nations like Chad, diverting precious money that should instead be going to meet people's basic needs.

Speaking to a group of young people in Turin, Italy in 2015 Pope Francis said, "There is the hypocrisy of speaking about peace and producing arms, and even selling weapons to this one, who is at war with that one."

Seeking fresh insights to counter the worn-out, death-dealing argument that powerful militaries and lethal weapons are needed to defend one's nation, I turned to Eli McCarthy, PhD, director of justice and peace for the Conference of Major Superiors of Men.

"It's unrealistic and unwise to keep arming groups in conflict situations. The ‘war on terror' for the last 15 years has exacerbated the problems and overall failed to get at the root causes of conflict," said McCarthy.

Instead, the U.S. government and international community need to invest much more in training and research on nonviolent resistance strategies like unarmed civilian protection, he noted.

"There are many courageous persons in regions of conflict risking their lives engaging in trauma-healing, restorative justice, inter-religious dialogue, mediation, early warning systems and nonviolent resistance."

McCarthy said creative diplomatic efforts including all key stakeholders, and genuinely addressing the basic needs of people are essential to easing tensions and conflict.

He also emphasized the importance of investing in industry transition in U.S. communities that rely on the arms industry for jobs.

We need to use humanizing language towards all, and work to reduce cultural marginalization, added McCarthy.

"Justice, right reason, and the recognition of man's dignity cry out insistently for a cessation to the arms race," wrote St. John XXIII in his prophetic 1963 encyclical Pacem In Terris ("Peace on Earth").

Let each of us pray and work for the day that justice, right reason, and the recognition of the dignity of every person prevails over the evil of the arms race, the arms trade and military arms in general.

May the Spirit of the nonviolent Jesus lead us to disarm our hearts. For only people with nonviolent hearts are capable of building a nonviolent world.

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings about Catholic social teaching. His keynote address, "Advancing the Kingdom of God in the 21st Century," has been well received by diocesan and parish gatherings from Santa Clara, Calif. to Baltimore, Md. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

On Aug. 20, 1914, with World War I less than a month old, Pope Pius X died, and on Sept. 3, 1914, Benedict was elected pope, only four months after being created a cardinal.

Crowned on Sept. 6, 1914, he possessed the diplomatic experience that the conclave had wanted.

The first four years of Benedict's seven-and-a-half-year papacy were to be consumed by his ultimately unsuccessful attempts to stop a war that he condemned as "the suicide of civilized Europe."

Born Giacomo della Chiesa in Genoa 1854, the sixth child of an ancient but poor patrician family, Benedict was ordained in 1878, spent much of his life in the Vatican's diplomatic service and became undersecretary of state in 1901.

In 1907, he became archbishop of Bologna.

As archbishop, della Chiesa spoke of the church's need for neutrality and to promote peace and ease suffering, but his role as a peacemaker and conciliator came up against several obstacles that predated the war.

The conflict ("the Roman question") between Italian state and church, which had existed since 1870, was unresolved.

Coolness between the Vatican and Russia stemmed from tensions with the Orthodox church, while the unification of Germany in 1870 had made it a dominant Protestant power in Europe, at the cost of Catholic Austria and thus lessening the Holy See's influence.

Germany's "Kulturkampf" had, among other things, banned religious orders, withdrawn state subsidies from the church, removed religious teachers from schools, imprisoned clergy, and when the training of priests reverted to the state, half of the seminaries closed.

In France, the church had forfeited property since the separation of church and state in 1905.

In November 1914, Benedict published the first of his 12 encyclicals, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum.

The greatest and wealthiest nations, he said, were "well-provided with the most awful weapons modern military science has devised, and they strive to destroy one another with refinements of horror." Continue reading

Sources

• Vassallomalta
• Image: Times of Malta.com

There were men on horseback calling the boys to war and long black cars arriving to steal people away in the dead of night; there were girls who'd wandered the landscape, insane after sexual violations; there was the survival of the fittest in concentration camps; there were pregnant women beaten until their children were lost and bodies piled up in times of famine; there was arrest and exile for the theft of a turnip; there were those who were battered for being a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim or a Bahá'í.

Let's say that, in the world of ideas that swirled around you, approximations were made of how to make sense of this mess: the presence of certain kinds of states; the presence of certain kinds of social diversity; the presence of certain kinds of religions. And let's say that the shattering stories had piled on over the years and at some point you just snapped. And you wanted to study war no more.

As it turns out, it's harder to study peace than you might think. Continue reading

Sources

• Margaret Paxson in Aeon Magazine
• Image: Get-Covers