Fighting Poverty To Build Peace -- Part 9

Quotes from the Message of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace

Fighting Poverty To Build Peace

January 1, 2009

We all have a role to play.

“In the Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, John Paul II warned of the need to “abandon a mentality in which the poor - as individuals and as peoples - are considered a burden, as irksome intruders trying to consume what others have produced.” The poor, he wrote, “ask for the right to share in enjoying material goods and to make good use of their capacity for work, thus creating a world that is more just and prosperous for all.’” (no. 14).

“Faithful to this summons from the Lord, the Christian community will never fail, then, to assure the entire human family of her support through gestures of creative solidarity, not only by ‘giving from one's surplus’, but above all by ‘a change of life- styles, of models of production and consumption, and of the established structures of power which today govern societies.’ At the start of the New Year, then, I extend to every disciple of Christ and to every person of good will a warm invitation to expand their hearts to meet the needs of the poor and to take whatever practical steps are possible in order to help them. The truth of the axiom cannot be refuted: ‘to fight poverty is to build peace’ (no. 15).