Yes, you guessed right. This next section of Pope Francis’ Fratelli tutti, “Paths of Renewed Encounter,” (#225-270) is all about peace. But it’s not about peace up in the sky. It’s about peace that hits the ground running. It’s about peace that’s about real encounter.
Francis begins his reflections by saying what should warm the heart of any Dominican. He says the starting place is recovering truth as central. (#226-7) He says that truth is an inseparable companion of justice and mercy. All three must form a team for peace to be real. This means that any act of violence is a wound to humanity. The cycle of violence/hatred/violence must be broken.
Francis says that there is an art and architecture of Peace. It involves every one of us (#231) and must include from the start, those who are the most vulnerable, the ‘least.’ (#233-5) He then turns to a discussion of forgiveness (#236). Admitting that conflict is inevitable, Francis then advises forgiving but not forgetting when keeping horrendous behavior in mind can prevent us from allowing it to happen again. We forgive. That means we refuse to hold onto what degrades, freeing us from its poison. But the memory must keep us on guard that the violence is not repeated. And so we remember the Holocaust. We remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Forgetting these victims would be an injustice (#252).
Next, Francis addresses the violence of war and the death penalty (#256-270). It is interesting that he puts these two together, as if they reflect each other. For Francis, war is the ultimate negation of all rights and a dramatic assault on the environment. To prevent it, he says, nations must ensure the uncontested rule of law and the tireless recourse to negotiation. New weapons and technologies have granted war an uncontrollable destructive power over great numbers of innocent civilians (#258). In our day, the risks of war far outweigh its supposed benefits, thus making a ‘just war’ no longer possible. It is a failure of both politics and humanity, a stinging defeat before the forces of evil (#261). Instead, Francis suggests that the funds used for war preparation should become a fund to put an end to hunger and be turned to help impoverished countries develop so their people don’t have to go elsewhere to survive (#262).
Finally, Francis calls for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide as no longer necessary and inadmissible (#263). Moreover, he calls for an improvement to prison conditions, calling a life imprisonment a secret death penalty (#268). Can we in the United States hear him? Can the world hear him.? For this we can pray. Indeed, this we can proclaim.
