In 2017, on the 50th anniversary of the Vatican’s first World Day of Peace message, Pope Francis issued the groundbreaking statement, “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace.” It was perhaps the Vatican’s first official statement on active nonviolence, and it raises a number of important questions for the world Church: Is God nonviolent, and does God want us to renounce violence as well? In a violent world, does nonviolence work?

In this conference, speakers from around the world—Lebanon, Kenya, Colombia, India, Brazil, Italy, Croatia, the U.S., and the Philippines—will explore these questions through five different lenses, each a different roundtable discussion:

• theologies of nonviolence
• martyrdom and the cross
• practices of nonviolent peacebuilding and the “responsibility to protect”
• gender and nonviolence
• grassroots church formation of people in the practice of nonviolence

Keynote Speakers:

Mauro Garofalo — Head of International Relations
Community of Sant’Egidio (Rome)

Robert Emmet Meagher — Professor of humanities, Hampshire College
Author of Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War 
(Amherst, MA)

Organized by DePaul University’s Center for World Catholicism & Intercultural Theology (CWCIT), World Catholicism Week is now in its 11th year; an annual event, it gathers scholars from around the world to explore a single topic.