Statement of the Carmelite JPIC Commission on Current World Conflicts:

We members of the International Carmelite Commission for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation, gathered in Rome from October 13-16 to plan the tasks for the coming year, would like to send you our message of peace, solidarity and fraternity for our brothers and sisters killed and wounded through acts of terrorism and war.

We make the Pope Francis' words our own:
Let the attacks and weapons cease, please, because it must be understood that terrorism and war bring no solutions, but only to the death and suffering of many innocent lives. War is a defeat, every war is a defeat.

The total siege of vulnerable civilian populations on either side only demonstrates the political incapacity and moral immaturity of governments and adds yet another failure to the history of the international community in building a peaceful and prosperous world through justice, global solidarity, respect for human dignity and the common good.

As Carmelites we never forget that righteousness and peace will embrace and, therefore, our work for justice contributes to the construction of a peaceful world (cf. Const. 120). “It is also an expression of “the little ones” (minores) of history, so that we may speak a word of hope and of salvation from their midst more by our life than by our words”. (Const. 24). 

In times of pain and sadness due to the violence unleashed, let us pray to God for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, for our Ukrainian and Russian brothers and sisters, the brutalized citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the fratricides of peoples of the two Sudans, Myanmar and Haiti, and for so many peoples in our common home.  We pray and call on the different sides of the conflicts to engage in dialogue and sue for peace in order to cease the escalation of death and horror and return to the path of justice and peace.