Holy Spirit, our source of light and strength, we thank you for having inspired the call to peace-makers from all over the world to meet in the dramatic situation of humanity to reconsider our responsibility, to deepen and promote the liberating and healing nonviolence of Jesus.
Merciful God, our Father and Mother, you sent your Son Jesus, our Brother, to reveal through his life and teaching your divine, self-giving Love and so incarnate in our world the power of nonviolence, able to overcome ALL forms of violence and to reconcile humanity in justice and peace.
We confess that for centuries our Church, people of God, has betrayed this central message of the Gospel many times and participated in wars, persecution, oppression, exploitation and discrimination.
Holy Spirit, as we meet as peacemakers, we count on your light and your strength to help revive in the Theology of Peace the nonviolent message of Jesus in which there is no place for violence and to offer to all Christians the arms of peacemaking, pardon and reconciliation.
Holy Spirit, we trust in your light and strength that this Conference may mark a new step for our Church, on its way to becoming a Church of Peace, in the spirit of our Brother Jesus and so respond to the cry of humanity for life in dignity and peace.
Hildegard Goss-Mayr, Theologian and Peace Militant
March 2016
Explanatory notes
This text was written for a prayerful support before and during a unique Conference on Nonviolence & Just Peace held in Rome from April 11 to 13, 2016. Invited by the Pontifical Council for Justice & Peace and Pax Christi International, people from around the world, many from contexts of war and ongoing violence, will to contribute to renewed Catholic teaching and practice on war and peace, violence and nonviolence.