Pax Christi has promoted a spirituality of nonviolence

Celebrating Pax Christi USA: 50 years of building the peaceable kingdom

Pax Christi USA will celebrate its 50th anniversary of establishment as the official Catholic peace movement in the United States in August, but this golden jubilee is marred by the ongoing war in Ukraine and recent mass shootings in the United States, writes Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, the group's president.

"From its inception, Pax Christi has promoted a spirituality of nonviolence that engages individuals, communities and nations in the long-term search for peaceful resolutions to conflict," Stowe says. "The signs of the times that were current in 1972 remain, even if circumstances and particulars have changed. The Gospel of Jesus, the Peacemaker who reconciles humanity with God, continues to call us all to conversion. Members of Pax Christi strive to respond to that call, to root out tendencies to violence in their own hearts and minds, to and join others in a community that wants to live the spirit of the Beatitudes."

Read more of Stowe's commentary here.

More background:

• Pax Christi USA recently named 20 new Ambassadors of Peace, who join 30 previous such ambassadors in being recognized for contributions they have made toward furthering the practice of Gospel nonviolence.

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Q & A with Anna Robertson, on Catholic young adults and climate action

Anna Robertson is the Catholic Climate Covenant's first director of youth and young adult mobilization, a role she began in December 2020. After a year and a half working with Catholic youth and young adults with specific interest in climate change, ecological justice and creation spirituality, Robertson has ideas on how we might best serve and accompany this particular group of U.S. Catholics.

"There's a lot of celebration around young people leading the charge on climate and saying that young people are our hope. For many people that can be worrisome," she says. "There is a longing for elders in this work. Many of the young people I work with are active agents of change and also have an appreciation for the need for self-care and resilience. And there's a sense of this happening holistically within community, rather than individually."

Read more of the Q&A with Robertson here.

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More headlines

• At Global Sisters Report, read a Q&A with Sr. Agatha Chikelue, a member of an indigenous order of Catholic sisters founded in southeast Nigeria. She is a respected organizer of programming around conflict resolution and interreligious dialogue.

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• ICYMI: Despite their pro-life bona fides, a five-member panel at a recent Georgetown University forum voiced their hesitancies with the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision that overturned the court's landmark Roe v. Wade ruling 49 years earlier.