Pacem in Terris reflected a profound sense of its own historical moment, both sacred and secular. In less than five weeks’ time (11 October – 16 November 1962), Pope John XXIII had convened the Second Vatican Council, negotiated behind the scenes during the Cuban crisis, and had learned from his physicians that he only had a short time to live. Officially published on Maundy Thursday (11 April 1963), Pacem in Terris is often called his “last will and testament”. The encyclical’s approach to “reading the signs of the times” would be incorporated only a few years later by the Council’s Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et Spes (GS §44). In his World Day of Peace Address (2003), marking the fortieth anniversary of Pacem in Terris, Pope John Paul II said: “Looking at the present and into the future with the eyes of faith and reason, Blessed John XXIII discerned deeper historical currents at work. Things were not always what they seemed on the surface. Despite wars and rumours of wars, something more was at work in human affairs, something that to the Pope looked like the promising beginning of a spiritual revolution” (WDP, §3). Commenting on the sub-title of the encyclical – “On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity, and Liberty” – Pope John Paul insisted that these are the “essential requirements of the human spirit”, and therefore of a global community bound together not by coercion or by the mere absence of war, but rather the most deeply human actions of discovering and acknowledging the truth, respecting and protecting the rights of others, sharing our goods of mind and spirit with others, and freely assuming responsibility for our own choices. These principles, he explained, constitute the foundations for peace, properly and fully understood: "Boldly, but with all humility, I would like to suggest that the Church’s fifteen-hundred-year-old teaching on peace as “tranquillitas ordinis – the tranquillity of order” as Saint Augustine called it (De Civitate
... Read allThe Global Quest for Tranquillitas Ordinis
The Global Quest for Tranquillitas Ordinis
Pacem in Terris, Fifty Years Later
List of Participants
Prof. Lord David Alton
Prof. Margaret S. Archer
Dr. Dr. Herbert Batliner
Prof. Michel Bauwens
Prof. Enrico Berti
Prof. Rocco Buttiglione
Prof. Avv. Guzmán M. Carriquiry Lecour
Prof. Partha S. Dasgupta
Prof. Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista
Prof. Pierpaolo Donati
Prof. Gérard-François Dumont
Mr. Cornelius G. Fetsch
Prof. Ombretta Fumagalli Carulli
Prof. Alan García Pérez
President Prof. Mary Ann Glendon
Prof. F. Russell Hittinger
Msgr. Egon Kapellari
Walter Cardinal Kasper
Msgr. Luis F. Ladaria Ferrer, S.J.
Prof. Pierre Manent
Reinhard Cardinal Marx
Prof. Janne Haaland Matlary
Prof. A. James McAdams
Msgr. Prof. Roland Minnerath
Prof. Lubomír Mlcoch
Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia
Prof. Vittorio Possenti
Prof. José T. Raga
Prof. Veerabhadran Ramanathan
Prof. Mina M. Ramirez
Prof. Gregory M. Reichberg
Óscar Andrés Card. Rodríguez Maradiaga
Antonio María Card. Rouco Varela
Prof. Kevin Ryan
Prof. Céline Saint-Pierre
Msgr. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo
Prof. Joseph Stiglitz
Amb. Hanna Suchocka
Prof. Dr. Dr. Hans Tietmeyer
Msgr. Mario Toso, SDB
Prof. Wilfrido V. Villacorta
Dr. Jimmy Wales
Prof. Thomas D. Williams, L.C.
Prof. Stefano Zamagni
Prof. Paulus Zulu