Excerpts from Synodal Address
VATICAN CITY, OCT. 12, 2001 (Zenit.org).- Following are passages from Angolan Archbishop Francisco Viti's address to the Synod of Bishops, in which he analyzed the key conditions for world peace. The prelate heads the Archdiocese of Huambo.
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"The Apostle St. Peter presents the Savior of the world as our peace. And peace, we know this well, is living together and acting together. It is mutual acceptance and mutual acknowledgment in the equality of human dignity.
"Peace is communion of hearts united in the awareness of one origin and in concerted effort to get to the top of one's destination in the present time, as well as, beyond time, in eternity.
"I am speaking of integral peace, the one of the children of God. It is fraternal solidarity which the Lord gained for us on the throne of the cross. And what could be more contrary than to make war in order to finish with war? War is death, it is separation, it will never build [a] living together and even less [an] acting together.
"Peace is dialogue, it is mutual listening and patiently resuming, as John Paul II told us in his Messages for the World Day of Peace, in particular in the one of 1985. ...
"Dialogue is part of the wisdom of nations and reveals the meaning of history. To illustrate the good grounds of this statement, I wish to draw your attention to the document which I have just quoted.
"The Holy Father refers to the 150 armed conflicts after the great world war. They did not lead to justice and even less so to peace. To make peace, the belligerent people should have entered a dialogue. Since then, what could be more contrary to peace than excluding the enemy and refusing dialogue.
"For those who wish to make war perennial, there will always be pretexts against the enemy. However, whole countries will be condemned to depopulation, and fundamental freedoms will be given up in the hands of the strongest, putting the great majority in the towline of history.
"In a chapter entitled 'The Wealth of Knowledge,' a historian on economics wrote: 'Institutions and culture first; money next; but from the beginning and increasingly, the payoff was to knowledge,' that is to say, institutions and culture first of all; money afterward. But what relates to a long time is knowledge.
"Here, we touch a neuralgic point of the dignity of peoples, including everything of world peace. In fact, education conditions progress. This is a synonym of peace. In the name of the poor and of evangelical solidarity, I beg you brothers of the 'developed' world: Come to our aid. Let's build peace and progress together in solidaric fraternity. Thank you.
[Original text: French]
Zenit - The World Seen From Rome
12. oktober 2001