Pope Francis’ Message for the World Day of Peace 2025 invites each of us «to strengthen and consolidate our faith; to renew our commitment to conversion and disarmament.”
So does the cardinal Michael Czerny, Prefect of Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, in his speech on Thursday morning in the Vatican Press Office during the presentation of the Message whose theme, chosen by the Pontiff, is “Forgive us our debts: grant us your peace”. They also participated in the meeting as speakers Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network; and the engineer Vito Alfieri Fontanaformer designer and manufacturer of anti-personnel mines at the helm of the family company, Tecnovar of Bari, who after a dramatic conversion in 1993 became a humanitarian deminer in the Balkans as he says in the book I was the man of war (Laterza) published last year.
«The ideas of “sins” and “debts” are incorporated into the biblical meaning of jubilee», explained Cardinal Czerny, «the word derives from yobelthe ram’s horn that announces the time “of forgiveness and freedom for all the people”. every 50 years. This dates back to the Law of Moses in ancient biblical times. The Church has employed this Jubilee model since the year 1300. Consistent with the ancient meaning, the Holy Father speaks of poor countries. In our time, he says, this must include the conversion of hearts, the cancellation of foreign or international debt and the payment of ecological debt.”
On disarmament, Cardinal Czerny explained that «the loud sound of the ram’s horn does not invite us to a moralistic effort of self-improvement, but to a radical change in the way we look at reality. When we entrust the present to God and live today in faith and service, the future is no longer threatened. Instead, waiting for the Lord, paying attention and exercising responsibility are expressed concretely in acting for the good, for unity and for care. Today and tomorrow”, he continued, “are in the merciful and providential hands of God the Father, as Jesus Christ clearly proclaims and as the Holy Spirit constantly consoles us. Such faith frees our hearts from anguish, to respond and serve. Relax your face! Smile at your brothers and sisters! Give thanks for the earth, our common home! Recognize in them the presence of the One who smiles at us first. Almost as if to summarize the challenge of the Jubilee, Pope Francis invites us, the entire human family, to disarm our hearts. Concretely, he proposes three urgent gestures of détente and peace: forgiving foreign debt, eliminating the death penalty and establishing a Global Fund to eradicate world hunger.”
In his speech, engineer Fontana recounted the two lives he lived – the first as a designer and manufacturer of anti-personnel mines and the second as a humanitarian deminer – reflecting on the theme of the World Day of Peace: «When I was an arms manufacturer I thought that war was inherent to the human soul. Messages aimed at responsibility and solidarity deserved a shrug if not some ironic comments. Those who work in the armaments sector work hard to offer customers products that ensure quick and effective solutions to deal with a war. And there are customers who believe it or pretend to believe it. The important thing is that the seller and buyer make a good deal. Wars on the other hand”, he continued, “quickly immerse themselves in the mud of the trenches and last for years. Maybe the trick is to continue supplies indefinitely and multiply prices “otherwise the front will collapse”. In short, life wasn’t bad, moral problems appeared and disappeared thinking that if I hadn’t made the anti-personnel mines, someone else would have done it. International tensions kept work stable and as a cold war ended, another one arrived in the Middle East and so on… Then something jams the mechanism: land questions from your children who ask you what you do and why you do it, the pressure of public opinion which discovers the problem of the use of anti-personnel minesthe venerable man’s invitation to dialogue Don Tonino Bello who asked me to think about my life if not to change it. However, I changed my life by trying to make a minimal remedy for the “before”. What was normal for me had become a burden.” Fontana spoke with great frankness about the difficult years of change: «You leave a privileged bubble in which that one percent of the population lives that produces, controls and distributes weapons and you enter a world you don’t expect. A world where billions of people want and hope to live and coexist in peace. But, as the Holy Father says, the peace consciousness of ordinary people is torn apart by lies, by useless inequality, by fear, by the lack of sustenance playing into the hands of the small minority that manages and fuels conflicts of all kinds for their own purposes. After having worked in demining for more than fifteen years in the Balkans, after the bloody war of the 1990s, I can say that my colleagues and I have been thanked very few times. Anyone who is touched by war or any other misfortune that has devastated their life, meaning land, work, family, does not think of receiving help even if fraternal but instead demands compensation for the useless pain by which they have been crushed. Once the reclamation work was finished, people went back to work without useless chatter. At most, as happened in Kosovo, they asked you for wooden beams, bricks and tiles to rebuild the houses and they would take care of it. The great war in the Middle East now requires the laying of minefields which will have little effect from a military point of view but will represent future revenge for those who try to return to their homes or he will try to occupy those abandoned by those who fled. What debts can populations affected by war, famine and exploitation have towards the rest of the world?”, asked Fontana, “I believe that we must think like the Holy Father and feel like debtors”.
