Promoting a pedagogy of peace

“To return the family to the center of our attention, since it is the heart of the development and promotion of a pedagogy of peace.” These are the words of Undersecretary Gabriella Gambino, speaking a few days ago in the Sala Stampa of the Holy See at the press conference for the presentation of the Message for the 53^rd World Day of Peace.

The family, she continued, should be thought of “as the common thread that runs through all the questions connected to the lack of peace: if we strengthen the family, if we reinforce the stability and the capacity for trust and reliability at a level that is able to be transmitted to a family’s own children, we can make it a place for the generation of hope. Because it is in this, given certain conditions, that little ones can learn dialogue, respect, the search for the good, and forgiveness. It is only within the family that an ethic of fraternity and peaceful coexistence can spring up between individual persons and between peoples. Therefore,” she explained, “above all as Christians, we are called to support the stable family, which is founded on the conjugal convent, on peace and on mutual trust.”

Recalling the hope of the Holy Father in the Message that “each person coming into the world can develop the promise of love, life, and peace that he carries within himself,” Gambino underscored that it is “a very strong message, a vocational message. He is asking us to create the conditions necessary so that the ray of God’s fatherhood can be presented to the eyes of every son and daughter who comes into the world, presenting it as a journey of love, a vocation, the destiny of a life, which families must be able to show their children. We, as Christians, believe in the love of God: this certainty is the message of hope and peace to be conveyed to our children. As the Church and as families we can, therefore, work together to create the conditions necessary so that each of our children can walk ‘among the beautiful things’ that the Father had in mind for them. Only by doing so,” she concluded, “can we generate an authentic culture of encounter and a desire for peace in the heart of every man.”