Screaming for Peace

These words seem so far removed from us amid the crude reality of today’s increasingly devastating wars. Scream for peace, wrote Rabin.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin

The Pope has echoed his words. “In many parts of the world,” writes Francis, “the decaying of fundamental human rights is incessant, especially the rights to life and freedom of religion. The tragedy of human trafficking, where men without scruples speculate on desperate lives, represents just one disturbing example. Along with the wars fought with arms in battle come wars less visible yet no less cruel, which are fought in the economic and financial fields with means just as destructive to lives, families, and businesses.” 
 

Scream for peace so that beauty may triumph, says the Pope, so that hope can be born again, and all the races, cultures, creeds, and sexes of this planet can coexist. So that mutual respect can finally take root in our hearts. 

In the meantime, peace is betrayed in every corner of the world. Pope Francis has the courage to scream for it, as do other well-meaning men, the interpreters of a new humanity who often go unheard. Peace! scream the just, to break the deafening silence surrounding the injustices of governments of dominant nations.

To break the deafening silence surrounding the empty rhetoric. Peace is a revolutionary word in this time of politically corrupt, fabricated lies. The Pope has placed peace at the center of his ministry, as Gospel. He has called for the reconciliation between peoples by inviting warring governments to his house, the Vatican. Reaffirming that peace is possible only when you face one another. Dialogue alone can uncover the causes of divisive hatred. Dialogue is the only guarantee of safety for the people of the world.
 

In the past, governments had War Ministries (in the U.S., a Department of War). Over time they changed into Defense Ministries (Department of Defense). What has emerged is a global diplomacy convinced that arms would never have been used unless said country had not been attacked.

Perhaps it is time to entertain a new, revolutionary idea: the creation of a Ministry of Peace to combine the secular State and  the irreplaceable sacredness of harmony between different groups of people. Even when they have differences of opinion, those groups would know how to discuss those differences and learn from their diversity.

These Ministers of Peace could finally engage in discussions on an international stage, rather than occupying the most profitable places in the world, and guarantee all the inhabitants of this special home, Mother Earth, a safe place to live. Scream peace. Declare an end to the times in which man is man’s worst enemy. Not until then will we discover, in the supreme beauty of brotherhood, the only way to save the world.