Catholic Peacebuilding in Times of Crisis: Hope for a Wounded World

June 20-23, 2022
Location: Online Zoom Webinar

The world is emerging from an historic health crisis that has exacerbated existing conflicts, poverty, inequalities, polarization, and threats to the environment. While the COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented cooperation and heroic responses by many, it also exposed deficits in leadership and emboldened authoritarians, demagogues, and chauvinistic nationalists. Just as the world hopes to move beyond the pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens global peace in ways thought unimaginable when the pandemic began. The challenge to Catholic peacebuilders is clear: we must ensure that the post-pandemic return to “normal” does not look like the pre-pandemic status quo, or worse. That will require an integral and integrated approach to peace, development, and ecology because the cry of war’s victims, the cry of the poor, and the cry of the earth rise as one (Laudato Si, no. 49).

This virtual conference convened a wide range of Catholic peacebuilders—Church leaders, scholars, peacebuilding specialists, and other practitioners—from around the world. It allowed participants to learn from their rich and diverse experiences in confronting challenges to peace around the world and helped them discern new and creative ways to respond to the historic challenges to peace that we now face. Berkley Center senior fellows José Casanova, Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J., and Katherine Marshall participated as panel speakers.

This conference was hosted by the Catholic Peacebuilding Network (CPN) and co-sponsored by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. A complete list of sponsors, sessions, and speakers is available on the conference website. Recordings of all sessions, plenaries, and breakouts are available on CPN's YouTube channel.

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Participants

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