MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI
FOR THE CELEBRATION OF
THE WORLD DAY OF PEACE
1st JANUARY 2008
THE HUMAN FAMILY - A COMMUNITY OF PEACE
FOR THE CELEBRATION OF
THE WORLD DAY OF PEACE
1st JANUARY 2008
THE HUMAN FAMILY - A COMMUNITY OF PEACE
At the beginning of a New Year, I wish to send my fervent good wishes for peace, together with a heartfelt message of hope to men and women throughout the world. I do so by offering for our common reflection the theme which I have placed at the beginning of this message. It is one which I consider particularly important: the human family, a community of peace. The first form of communion between persons is that born of the love of a man and a woman who decide to enter a stable union in order to build together a new family. But the peoples of the earth, too, are called to build relationships of solidarity and cooperation among themselves, as befits members of the one human family: "All peoples", as the Second Vatican Council declared,"are one community and have one origin, because God caused the whole human race to dwell on the face of the earth (cf. Acts 17:26); they also have one final end, God"
A copy of the full message from Pope Benedict XVI can be found on the Vatican website http://www.vatican.va
