The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development has released the theme of the next World Peace Day Message to be held on 1 January 2022, as “Education, work and dialogue between generations: tools for building lasting peace”.

In its communiqué the Dicastery writes that “Pope Francis thus identifies three vast contexts today in full mutation, to propose an innovative reading that responds to the needs of current and future times, inviting everyone ‘to read the signs of the times with the eyes of faith’, so that the direction of this change awakens new and old questions with which it is right and necessary to be confronted”.

From the three identified contexts, the communiqué adds, the following questions arise:

Does work in the world respond, more or less, to the vital need of humans for justice and freedom?
Are the generations truly in solidarity with each other?
Do they believe in the future?
Do governments succeed in setting a horizon of peace in this context?

World Peace Day was established by Pope Paul VI in his December 1967 message and celebrated for the first time in January 1968.

The full text of the Holy Father’s message for 2022 will be released in due course.

ENDS