In his Message for the 50th World Day of Peace, celebrated on 1 January and centered this year on the theme: Non-violence: a Style of Politics for Peace, Pope Francis says that nonviolence is the true direction to take for human progress and that violence, instead, is deceptive.
He makes an appeal for disarmament and for the abolition of nuclear weapons and assures everyone that the Church is committed to pursuing peace through nonviolence. In a broken world in which a “piecemeal war” is being fought, he vigorously declares that everyone is called to build a world free of violence.
The sole way to build peace, his message affirms, is to make nonviolence “the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships, our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms.”