Pope: ‘Peace is made with our hands not just by the powerful’

By Salvatore Cernuzio and Lisa Zengarini

“Peace is made with our hands”. It is not only built by the powerful “with their choices and their international treaties”, we too can build peace, “in our homes, in our families, between neighbors, in our workplaces, in the neighborhoods where we live “.

Pope Francis offered this reminder in the preface to a new book bringing together texts and reflections on the relationship between justice and peace.

Entitled “La pace e la giustizia si baceranno” (“Justice and peace will embrace”), the book was published on Wednesday by the Vatican editions LEV and L’Arena, before his pastoral visit to Verona, in the north of Italy. , on May 18, which will have as its objective justice and peace.

The close link between justice and peace

“If justice is lacking, peace is threatened; without peace, justice is compromised,” the Pope writes. “It is more true than ever that justice, understood as the virtue of giving what is due to God and others, is closely linked to peace, in the most authentic and proper sense of the Hebrew word “shalom” “. A term which indicates “not so much the absence of war but the fullness of life and prosperity”.

Selfishness breeds conflict

Peace makes justice possible, first among the “victims” of any conflict, just as “peace becomes a precondition for a just society”. However, the Pope emphasizes that these two dimensions of humanity have “a price” to pay: “fighting one's own selfishness”, that is to say “putting what is “mine” before what is “mine”. ours ” “.

All selfishness “is unjust” and “when it becomes a system in our personal and social life, it opens the doors to conflict, because, explains Pope Francis, to defend our interests (or those that we presume to be such), ” we are ready to do anything, even to oppress our neighbor, who from neighbor becomes an adversary and therefore an enemy to be humiliated, overthrown and vanquished.

The teachings of Father Romano Guardini

In this regard, the Pope quotes the unequivocal words of a “great Veronese citizen” who grew up in Germany, Father Romano Guardini: “Freedom does not consist of following a personal or political will, but of following what 'demands the nature of being'.

Fr. Guardini's educational action and philosophical-spiritual reflections were “a beacon in a particularly dark era”, that of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, “subjugated by the terrible yoke of the Nazi regime”.

The Pope recalls how certain members of the White Rose, the group of young Germans who denounced Nazism in Munich, “drew on the philosophical and religious writings of Guardini.” “From these readings, he notes, was born the non-violent action of these boys and girls who, by writing clandestine leaflets distributed in the city, tried to awaken the consciences of people, numbed by Hitler's totalitarianism. . And they paid with their lives for their choice of conscience and freedom.”

The story of Father Mercante and the private Dallasega

This dark chapter in the history of Europe reminds the Pope of the memory of the sacrifice of the Veronese priest, the abbot. Domenico Mercante and soldier Leonardo Dallasega, a Wehrmacht soldier from Val di Non, in the Trentino region. Their story, which dates back to April 1945, deserves to be told because it unites justice and peace “in a double personal sacrifice”.

In this troubled period at the end of the Second World War, soldier Dalla Sega was forcibly incorporated into a group of German paratroopers fleeing north as they entered the Val d'Illasi, in the province of Verona and on the border with the Trentino region. . Arriving in Giazza, the last village of Val d'Illasi, the soldiers, after a skirmish with Italian partisans, took Father Domenico Mercante hostage.

The 46-year-old priest, who had been ministering in the village for less than two years, was known for his actions to protect the civilian population during the Nazi-fascist occupation. The soldiers wanted to use him as a human shield to cross the mountains, reach Trentino and thus head towards the Brenner, to protect themselves from possible reprisals.

Arriving at the village of Cerè-San Martino, an officer ordered Dalla Sega to kill the priest. But, according to an eyewitness, Dalla Sega replied: “I'm Catholic, father of four children, they can't shoot a priest!”

The priest and the soldier were executed. Fr. Domenico's body was brought back to Giazza after a few days. Dallasega's was found with a crucifix, a rosary and a photo of his wife in his hand.

It was not until many years later that he was recognized: for decades, this German soldier objecting to his conscience had remained anonymous. The story was studied, documented and reported by the Veronese priest, Fr. Luigi Fraccari, engaged in Germany since 1943 alongside the Italian Military Internees (IMI) and with the apostolic nuncio at the time, Mgr Cesare Orsenigo.

Give our lives for others, even at the cost of our own

It is a “tragic incident”, notes Pope Francis in the preface, in which “we nevertheless find the deep meaning of Christian sacrifice: giving one's life for others, even at the cost of one's own”. This is “the mystery of Christ’s Easter: violence and death are overcome by love and self-sacrifice.”

“Perhaps,” the Pope continues, “we will not be obliged to shed blood to profess our faith, as still happens today in many regions of the world for many of our Christian brothers, but it is in the little things we are called to do. to bear witness to the strength and peace of the cross of Christ and the new life that is born from it: a gesture of forgiveness towards those who have offended us, to bear unjust slander, to help a marginalized person.

Choices of peace and justice to build a new world

Peace is built with small gestures, words and habits, Pope Francis explains: “We can build peace by helping a migrant who is begging in the street, by visiting an elderly person alone and without anyone to look after. speak, using multiple gestures. of care and respect towards our poor planet Earth, so mistreated by our exploitative selfishness, by welcoming every unborn child that comes into the world, a gesture that was an authentic act of peace for Saint Mother Teresa.”

Against the backdrop of a “fragmented” world war, there are therefore “small pieces of peace” which “if welded together, build a great peace”. “In these daily and easily achievable choices of peace and justice,” concludes the Pope. we can sow the beginning of a new world”, “where death will not have the last word and where life will flourish for all”.