Ministry of Peace

Never before has humanity felt the urgent need for the great treasures of the common good; freedom, justice, friendship, listening, closeness, and, in a word, PEACE. Peace is the highest value of all, the star that illuminates the hearts and minds of people, the harmony of the world indicated in the Declaration on Human Fraternity, signed and presented to the Holy Father on June 10, 2023. A seed has been planted, which Fratelli Tutti is nurturing for growth. Along the way, Fratelli Tutti has met the Association of the Community of Pope John XXIII, founded in 1968 by Father Oreste Benzi who, since the 1990s, has launched an extraordinary project for Peace, calling for the establishment of a dedicated Ministry as encouraged in the same Declaration on Human Fraternity. Since 2017, the community has also woven a communion of intent in a network with over 20 associations and entities and many national and international relationships for its realization.

“Men have always organized war: it's time to organize peace.” From the ashes of the Second World War, the Ministries of Defense and Interior replaced the Ministry of War. A birth that, to eradicate the scourge of war from history, should have been triplet, also giving birth to a Ministry of Peace. The Ministry of Peace could direct institutional organization towards activities that promote and create a culture of peace in the country, through national structural strategic plans for care, promotion, and maintenance. A genuine change of paradigm that reverses course by implementing nonviolent policies. Because peace is not a matter of becoming better, but a matter of intelligence.
Peace can be adequately maintained, planned, and sustained only by defusing those factors that contribute to tension and violence with specific infrastructures. A peace policy is needed to think about and care for peace. A peace that is not the absence of war, but the ability to create conditions of justice to prevent future conflicts. The creation of a dedicated ministry would guarantee an enlightened dialogue to seek and identify nonviolent strategic solutions and, through the exploration of the still unexplored spaces of the Constitutional Charter (articles 11-52-41-2nd paragraph, and article 2), could provide every government with competence in the nonviolent transformation of conflicts.

Gianfranco Cattai
NP April 2024