Peaceful story-hour time?
This week Pope Francis taught some ‘multi-ethnic integration Peace Factory’ children about peace:
“Peace is built day by day. … It is not an industrial product, it is an artisanal product. It is crafted every day with our work, with our life, with our closeness”, said Pope Francis yesterday to the children of the Peace Factory, the Italian association that aims to promote multi-ethnic integration and to raise awareness among spiritual leaders, politicians and in education so that they use a language of peace.
Francis answered the very direct and concrete questions posed by thirteen of the seven thousand children who filled the Paul VI Hall. Some were very personal: for instance, a girl asked if, like her, the Pope ever argued with his siblings or other members of his family. “We have all argued with someone in our family”, replied the Pope. “It is part of life, as one sibling wants to play one game, another wants to play a different one … but in the end the important thing is to make peace. … Do not end the day without making peace. At times I may be right and the other may be wrong. So how can I apologise? I don’t, but I make a gesture of closeness and the friendship continues. … I too have argued many times, even now… I lose my temper. But I always try to make peace. It is human to disagree. The important thing is that it does not linger, and that there is peace again afterwards”.
Another child asked if the Pope ever tired of being surrounded by so many people, and if he too needed some peace every now and then. “At times I would like to be calmer, to rest a little more, it is true”, he admitted. “But being with people does not take away peace. … What takes peace away is not caring for one another. Jealousy, envy and greed take away peace. But being with people is good, it does not stand in the way of peace! It tires me a little, because it is tiring and I am not a young man … but it does not take away peace”.
Here I think Pope Francis differs from the wisdom of the hermits and monks. It is good he values time with people, and of course doing good and loving others can never disturb true peace, but there is also the peace of prayer and solitude. As we are all human, the troubles and spirits that disturb us can also disturb the peace of others around us, so quiet solitude can be a peaceful alternative.
Other questions were more general, such as that of an Egyptian child who asked why people in positions of power did not help schools. “It is a question we can expand”, answered the Pope. “Why do many powerful people not want peace? Because they live from war, from the arms industry. Some powerful people earn from the production of arms, and sell weapons to one country that fights against another, and then they sell them to the other. It is the industry of death! And they earn money in this way.
Being around people can never disturb peace but many powerful people don’t want peace? One may ask, “Does it disturb Pope Francis to be around powerful people?” I suppose it would disturb him to be trapped in a Syrian neighborhood as it’s being destroyed by someone powerful just so they get rich making bombs.
Why must the pope teach children that powerful people desire war? Is that generally true? Won’t they learn to despise power that way? If they despise power, how will they seek order? Can a society full of radically educated children have peace?
Is it possible that some leaders desire peace and try to avoid war? Is there a chance that some powerful people may fight wars in order to create peace, or is every war wrong on both sides? Can some people both do good and be powerful? Who let the Pope loose with these children?
As you know, greed causes so much damage: the desire to have more and more money. When we see that everything revolves around money – the economic system revolves around money and not people – we make sacrifices and make war in order to defend money. And for this reason many people do not want peace. They earn more through war. They earn money, but we lose lives, we lose culture, we lose education, we lose many things. An elderly priest I met years ago used to say, ‘the devil enters via the wallet’”.
The Pope seems continuously to confuse the biblical adage, “love of money is the root of all evil” with the common mistranslation, “money is the root of all evil.”
The Pope explained to another child who asked for a definition of peace that “peace firstly means there are no wars … but it also means that there is friendship between all, that every day a step ahead is made for justice, so that there are no more children who are hungry, that there are no more sick children who do not have the possibility of receiving healthcare. Doing all of this means making peace. Peace involves work, it is not about staying calm and doing nothing. No! True peace means working so that everyone has a solution to the problems, to the needs, that they have in their land, in their homeland, in their family, in their society”.
Just as ‘pro-life’ in FrancisChurch is actually a whole list of things that living people may desire, ‘peace’ is now only possible when every ‘social’ good is achieved. There’s no peace unless there is no war, though wars may be necessary to preserve peace. There’s no peace unless all are friends, even enemies; and unless we all take a step toward justice, whatever that means; unless no one is hungry or sick, and we all have free healthcare.
Peace is everything!
And you have to work for peace in addition to all the work required to get all the previously mentioned things. We must work not only so someone we know isn’t hungry. We have to work and work and work so that everyone in the world is never hungry again, ever.
How is that peaceful? It sounds like slavery to me without rest.
