The Church has consistently taught that justice and charity are the foundations of peace. It may be right to think of “charity as the soul and justice as the substance of international peace”.

Enmity is incomparably easier than reconciliation. After all, it happens that we feel almost friendly towards an enemy, being able to shift the responsibility for all our misfortunes to him. […] And reconciliation? How can we live amongst the rubble? How to rid oneself of the memory of wrongs? How can we forget the suffering which filled a victim's entire life? […] Reconciliation requires reflection, moral sensitivity, conscience, great spiritual effort. It requires parting from delusions, from the mythology of hatred and seeing – in the old enemy and in oneself – a person under the same heaven.

We look upon this shaken Earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose — the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails. The building of such a peace is a bold and solemn purpose. To proclaim it is easy. To serve it will be hard. And to attain it, we must be aware of its full meaning — and ready to pay its full price. We know clearly what we seek, and why. We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. And now, as in no other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself. Yet this peace we seek cannot be born of fear alone: it must be rooted in the lives of nations. There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples, for, without justice the world can know only a tense and unstable truce. There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak. But the law of which we speak, comprehending the values of freedom, affirms the equality of all nations, great and small. Splendid as can be the blessings of such a peace, high will be its cost: in toil patiently sustained, in help honorably given, in sacrifice calmly borne.

We have survived bitter divisions in our society. Reconciliation requires us to put aside our differences and forgive the injuries done to us just as justice is essential to that equation. Those who have done wrong and broken the law must be punished. There can be no setting to rights or settling of accounts without that element. Until that is done there will be no finality to our collective nightmare. Until we all accept that simple fact the sense of hurt and betrayal continue.

Real peace is not just a matter of structures and mechanisms. It rests above all on the adoption of a style of human coexistence marked by mutual acceptance and a capacity to forgive from the heart. We all need to be forgiven by others, so we must all be ready to forgive. Asking and granting forgiveness is something profoundly worthy of every one of us,

I’d suggest that peace with justice begins with the example we set here at home, for we know from our own histories that intolerance breeds injustice. Whether it’s based on race, or religion, gender or sexual orientation, we are stronger when all our people — no matter who they are or what they look like — are granted opportunity, and when our wives and our daughters have the same opportunities as our husbands and our sons.

This is the way of peace — overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.

peace is possible. It needs to be implored from God as his gift, but it also needs to be built day by day with his help, through works of justice and love.

Reconciliation brings about the personal healing of survivors, the reparation of past injustices, the building or rebuilding of non-violent relationships between individuals and communities, and the acceptance by the parties to a conflict of a common vision and understanding of the past. In practice such all-encompassing reconciliation is not easy to realize. The experience of a brutal past makes the search for peaceful coexistence a delicate and intricate operation.

Peace brought to us by Christ is the attitude of all those who practice the laws of justice and love, established by God for harmony in creation. The Church must make an appeal to Africa, to have a pure conscience to work honestly towards the common good. The Church must also be the voice of those who have no say, to courageously denounce all those plans that make men slaves. We must make an effort to create internal and external peace and maintain it, fruit of victory and self-discipline.

You know we are all responsible for building peace in the world. Respond to blind violence and inhuman hatred with the extraordinary power of love. Forgive those who offend you. Do not let yourselves be dragged into manifestations of nationalism, racism and intolerance.

Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.

True reconciliation must incorporate the righteous elements of forgiveness and justice. Therefore, real meaningful forgiveness will only arise when firstly, we have to identify the aggrieved party and the wrongdoer must then ask for forgiveness for a specific wrong done. Once forgiveness is achieved, then the process of justice must take place and punishment given according to law. Only then, will true reconciliation begin.

World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.