Background: papal message for January 1, the World Day of Peace

December 31, 2015

On January 1, the Church commemorates the 49th World Day of Peace.

Pope Francis’s message for the day is entitled “Overcome Indifference and Win Peace.”

In his message for the 1st World Day of Peace, Blessed Pope Paul VI wrote, “It is Our desire that then, every year, this commemoration be repeated as a hope and as a promise, at the beginning of the calendar which measures and outlines the path of human life in time, that Peace with its just and beneficent equilibrium may dominate the development of events to come.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes Catholic teaching on peace and just war in its treatment of the Fifth Commandment; the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church discusses Catholic teaching on peace in Chapter 11. Between 1914 and 1968, five popes issued 21 encyclicals on peace. Since 1968, papal teaching on peace has been expressed primarily in the messages for the World Day of Peace.

 

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Further information:

• Pope Francis’s message for the World Day of Peace (2016)
• Fight indifference, Pope urges in World Day of Peace message (CWN, 12/15)
• Pope Francis’s messages for the World Day of Peace
• Pope Benedict’s messages for the World Day of Peace
• St. John Paul II’s messages for the World Day of Peace
• Blessed Paul VI’s messages for the World Day of Peace
• Catechism of the Catholic Church (Part Three)
• Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church