A new civilisation rooted in human dignity and capable of overcoming division is needed to ensure the peace, stability and prosperity of all people, speakers said at a Vatican conference on promoting peace.
Thirty Nobel Peace Prize winners, scientists, economists, mayors, doctors, managers, workers, sports champions and ordinary citizens gathered at the Vatican from 10th-11th May for the second World Meeting on Human Fraternity, a conference organised by the Fratelli Tutti Foundation to discuss ways of promoting human fraternity in fields including the environment, education, business, agriculture, media and health.
Opening the roundtable discussion, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, called for a reconsideration of the concept of “just war,” which he said is “highly problematic” in an age of advanced weapons that can produce “an unlimited number of civilian causalities.”
Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi social entrepreneur and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, said that weapons themselves are not the primary threat to peace in the world but rather the way that humanity thinks about itself.
“We have to rediscover ourselves as human beings with human value,” he said, which entails restructuring society to achieve “a civilization of three zeros: zero global warming, zero wealth concentration and zero unemployment.”
Picture: Graça Machel Mandela, former first lady of both South Africa and Mozambique, speaks at a conference on human fraternity at the Vatican, 10th May 2024. To the right is Rigoberta Menchú Tum, an Indigenous Guatemalan human rights activist and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner. (CNS screengrab/Fratelli Tutti Foundation)